A man has been found guilty of attempting to murder three children in Dublin.
Riad Bouchaker’s terrifying stabbing attack on two girls and a boy in Parnell Square East on 23 November, 2023, sparked a riot in the Irish capital.
Bouchaker, 52, denied any wrongdoing during a trial at the city’s Central Criminal Court.
Police at the scene of the attacks in Dublin in November 2023. Pic: PA
As well as the triple attempted murder, he was convicted of assault causing serious harm to childcare worker Leanne Flynn, who had collected the children from school and was taking them to their after-school.
Ms Flynn was stabbed as she tried to halt Bouchaker’s attack before other members of the public came to the group’s aid to restrain the knifeman.
After the attack, Ms Flynn said she was taken to the nearby Mater Hospital, placed into an induced coma and underwent two emergency surgeries.
The court heard how the childcare worker had to have her spleen and part of her stomach removed, and also suffered from a collapsed lung.
Pic: PA
Bouchaker was also found guilty of assaulting two young children and a teenager, and of producing a 36cm kitchen knife.
Jurors heard how one of the girls now has a “lifelong, life-limiting” condition and requires 24-hour care.
The attack sparked violent scenes. Pic: PA
The youngster, who was aged five at the time of the attack, will have to use a wheelchair for the rest of her life and is non-verbal.
Dr Louise Baker, a consultant paediatrician at Children’s Health Ireland at Temple Street, told the court the girl suffered a “severe acquired brain injury” caused by oxygen deprivation due to her heart stopping before being saved.
The girl, who Sky News is calling Emily, has to be fed through a PEG tube to her stomach, as she cannot swallow her own saliva safely.
Speaking exclusively in her first broadcast interview to Sky News, Emily’s mother said blood drained from her “whole body” when she was told of the attack in a phone call.
She sprinted to the scene and witnessed the emergency crew’s resuscitation attempts on the blood-stained pavement.
The mum, who we are calling Jo, said: “I saw her shoes and I saw when they lifted her. I think there were four people holding her body and they had taken her clothes off because of where her injury was.
“It’s burned in my memory.”
The family has since moved to a new home in south Dublin with ground-floor accommodation as stairs are no longer an option for the girl.
There are medical devices among the toys and dolls. Emily continues to battle her life-changing disability, and the road ahead is difficult.
Emily’s precious stuffed toys
Her bed houses a menagerie of stuffed toys for precious cuddles; Pyjama Bunny, Crack the Crocodile and a smiling vampire that is somewhat incongruously named Flower.
Jo does voices and accents for each character.
Emily’s colourful artwork
The mum also proudly displays her daughter’s vibrant collage of painted footprints – art having been a welcome distraction in the long rehabilitation from her life-changing injuries.
Describing the moment she had to explain to her daughter that she had been injured, while shielding her from the full truth, Jo said: “It was probably one of the hardest things that I had to do to explain to her.
“I just said that she got hurt and that’s why she couldn’t move the way that she used to or that she wanted to, or she couldn’t speak to us the way that she wanted to or that she used to.”
In the hours following the stabbing, Dublin city centre erupted in violence.
Workers cleaning up the aftermath. Pic: PA
The attack has been used by anti-immigration activists for their own purposes – held up as an example of the evils of uncontrolled immigration.
What they wouldn’t have known is that both Jo and her husband are themselves migrants to Ireland, he from another EU state, Jo from further afield.
Bouchaker did not put forward any evidence in his defence following the prosecution’s case.
During the trial, jurors were shown CCTV footage of interviews between him and members of the Irish police service An Garda Síochána in December 2023.
Through an interpreter, Bouchaker said he had been given a “negative decision” by the department of social welfare and explained he felt like “this country is telling me to leave”.
He said he was “sick”, not in his “right mind”, and did not “want to kill or harm the children”.
The court heard Bouchaker had brain surgery in 2021 and suffered a further head injury during the interventions of members of the public which required hospital treatment for roughly a month.
