'I saw him with a knife': Caio Benicio tells trial of intervening in Parnell Square attack

LAST UPDATE | 48 mins ago

A CHILDCARE WORKER acted with “extreme courage” when she grappled with Riad Bouchaker after he produced a large and “horrifying” knife and began ‘ferociously jabbing’ a group of children, the Central Criminal Court has heard.

Mr Bouchaker’s trial also heard evidence today from Caio Benicio, a Deliveroo driver who struck the accused on the head with his motorbike helmet and punched him.

Mr Benicio said he got involved after Mr Bouchaker grabbed a little girl away from creche worker Leanne Flynn and used a “big sharp knife” to stab the child three or four times in the chest.

Mr Bouchaker is charged with attempting to murder three children, assault causing harm to Ms Flynn and with the assault of two other children and one adult. He denies all charges.

Ms Flynn today told Karl Finnegan SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, that she had lined the children up in pairs on Dublin’s Parnell Square East at about 1.30pm as she prepared to take them to a nearby after-school creche. She said her attention was drawn to a man standing at a bus stop because she noticed a bus pull away but he didn’t get on it. He seemed to be looking for something in his bag, she said.

As she was zipping up the coat of one of the children before moving off, she said she saw the man walking towards the children. As he got closer, he adopted a ‘crouched motion’ and began moving hurriedly, she said. Ms Flynn saw him move in the direction of one girl, whom the court has previously heard suffered severe brain damage due to blood loss having been stabbed in the heart.

Ms Flynn noticed the knife, but couldn’t say where it had come from, and saw the man “ferociously jabbing” multiple times at the children.

She said: “I let out a shout and asked what he was doing and told him to get away from the children and I ran at him and grabbed him from behind.”

She said she grabbed the back of his jacket and when she pulled him away from the children, he turned around and looked at her. She said he seemed confused, “almost as if he wasn’t expecting an adult or someone bigger to approach him”.

She described a tussle in which Mr Bouchaker stabbed her in the back to the left side. She said she initially just felt something wet, but it didn’t immediately register that she had been injured. Once he had stabbed Ms Flynn, she said Mr Bouchaker “went back to try to get to the children again”.

He was close to the children, she said, swinging the knife, but Ms Flynn followed him and shouted at the children to run. She said some of the children had panicked and couldn’t move while others ran up the street towards the steps of a nearby hotel.

When Ms Flynn shouted ‘he has a knife’ and called for help, members of the public intervened. The witness grabbed the arms of any children she saw and pulled them away towards the hotel, where she herself sat down on the steps as she was getting lightheaded and finding it hard to breathe. She recalled seeing two children beside her, crying and with blood all over their hands.

She told the children they were safe and asked someone from the hotel to take them inside. She could see that there was a “big commotion” on the street with lots of people shouting and surrounding the man who had stabbed the children.

About 10 minutes later, paramedics put Ms Flynn into an ambulance which brought her to the Mater hospital. She was put in an induced coma for emergency surgery and spent one month in hospital. When she emerged from the coma, she discovered that her lungs had collapsed, her diaphragm had been severed and surgeons had removed part of her spleen.

‘Beyond words’

During cross-examination, defence counsel for Mr Bouchaker told Ms Flynn that there is no suggestion that anyone other than Mr Bouchaker caused the knife injuries that she and the children suffered. He also told her that her actions were “extremely courageous”.

Ms Flynn agreed that when Mr Bouchaker looked at her, he seemed “frantic”. She also agreed that he seemed confused that she had intervened, which was an “irrational response” given that in the circumstances, you would expect someone to intervene on behalf of the children.

Ms Flynn further agreed that the accused didn’t seem to be trying to stab her. She added: “The children seemed to be his main focus. I got hurt because I intervened, but he seemed hell-bent on getting the children.”

After Ms Flynn suffered the stab wound, she said Mr Bouchaker began “waving and slashing” the knife towards the children. Defence counsel said that Mr Bouchaker’s actions were “beyond words” but asked if it was possible that some of the children were injured “accidentally” while he was waving the knife. Ms Flynn accepted that it was possible.

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Riad Bouchaker (52), of no fixed address, is on trial at the Central Criminal Court charged with the attempted murder of two girls and one boy, and assault causing serious harm to Ms Flynn, at Parnell Square East in Dublin City on 23 November 2023.

He is further charged with assaulting two other children and an adult male and with producing a knife in a manner likely to intimidate.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and his trial before a jury of nine men and three women is expected to last up to five weeks.

Caio Benicio said he was on his motorbike coming down Parnell Square East towards O’Connell Street when he noticed people screaming and running. He said he first thought it was a fight between drug users, but then saw a big man fighting a woman over a little girl.

He said:

The bigger man was pulling the girl from the woman and she was trying to keep the kid, so I realised it was something not common.

He said he slowed down and as he approached, he saw the man grabbing the little girl.

“He pulled the girl from the woman with his left hand… and I saw him with a big sharp knife in the right hand. He started to stab the girl in the chest. I can’t be sure how many times he stabbed the girl, but I believe it was three or four times,” he told the court.

He got off his bike but couldn’t move fast because he had surgery on his knee two months earlier. He said Mr Bouchaker saw him coming but with the girl in one hand and the knife in the other, he was unable to defend himself. Mr Benicio said he took off his helmet to protect himself and used it to hit Mr Bouchaker on the head.

He said the helmet slipped from his hand so he punched Mr Bouchaker two or three times. “When I realised he couldn’t react and saw blood in his mouth, I stopped and stepped back,” he said.

Other people began kicking and hitting Mr Bouchaker, he said, until two women came and stood in front of him to protect him. The women shouted, “We are not savages here,” and the people stopped trying to hit Mr Bouchaker, the witness said.

‘He’s got a knife’

Cathal Faughnan told Mr Finnegan that he is a clinical nurse manager and was working at the Temple St Children’s Hospital that day. He happened to be on Parnell Square East when he saw a man in his 50s “looking very suspicious” near a group of children. He said the man ran across the pavement in front of him and began running up and down the line of children with a knife in his hand.

Mr Faughnan said he saw the man “go at one kid in particular” and then another boy who was being protected by a care worker.

He added: “He was physically going up and down the line of kids like he wanted to get every kid in that line. There was a lot of grabbing of the kids. The care worker was trying to protect them as much as she physically could.”

Mr Faughnan described seeing “repeated downward strikes” towards the children’s necks. He saw members of the public bring the man to the ground and one of them took the knife away. He could also see that one of the children had been seriously injured.

Mr Faughnan went into a hotel where some the children had taken refuge and showed his identification. He examined one boy who he had seen outside being grabbed numerous times. The boy had a small, superficial laceration to his neck, but no other apparent injuries.

He also assessed a small girl who had lacerations to the top of her head. Mr Faughnan agreed with defence counsel the “horrifying knife” that Mr Bouchaker used had an obvious capacity to kill a child. Mr Faughnan agreed that any stab wound directly to the chest or neck of a child using that knife would “almost certainly be catastrophic”.

Erica Hernon told Carol Doherty BL, prosecuting, that she was in the passenger seat while her husband was driving along Parnell Square when she saw a man “hovering” near children who had lined up on the pavement.

She said he produced a knife “out of nowhere” and held it in the air while a woman tried to stop him. She said she saw one child being “rugby tackled up high” by the man who then held the knife at the girl’s throat.

Ms Hernon shouted out the window “he has a knife” as she could see a lot of people were running towards the commotion. She said she saw a motorbike helmet fly up into the air and witnessed a bald man rugby tackle the man with the knife to the ground.

The trial continues on Tuesday in front of Mr Justice Tony Hunt and a jury of nine men and three women.

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