A woman has described to a jury her interaction with a man with a scar on his face before children were injured in an attack in Dublin three years ago.
The woman became “very emotional” as she described the “chaos” on Parnell Square East after the incident.
The Central Criminal Court in Dublin has heard multiple children and an adult were injured in the attack, including a girl who is now in a wheelchair and non-verbal.
Riad Bouchaker, aged 52 and of no fixed address, is charged with attempted murder of two girls and one boy, and assault causing serious harm to care worker Leanne Flynn, in Parnell Square East in Dublin City on November 23 2023.
He is also charged with assaulting three other people and with producing a 36cm kitchen knife. He has pleaded not guilty to all eight charges.
On the third day of his trial in Dublin, the jury were shown CCTV footage of the area before the attack, stills taken from CCTV footage and crime scene photos.
They were also shown a bloodstained sleeveless beige jacket belonging to Ms Flynn, two children’s jackets and a schoolbag.
The jury of three women and nine men also heard from a childcare assistant who helped Gardaí to identify the children in stills from the CCTV footage, a woman who was shopping in the area on that day and a Dublin Bus driver.
Luciana Yaya, a receptionist at an English language school, gave evidence to the trial on Friday.
She said at around 12.30pm that day, a man came in who “didn’t look like the usual person who would come in” and walked towards one side of the reception.
Under questioning from Karl Finnegan SC, for the prosecution, she described him as “a bit chubby”, with a scar on the left side of his face and wearing a brown coat and a beanie hat.
“I said ‘Sorry, can I help you?’ and he didn’t answer,” she told the court.
She said she asked him again and he replied: “‘No worries, I’m waiting for someone'” and when she asked who he was waiting for, he replied: “My friend and the kid.”
She said she told him there were no children in the building and he then left.
She told the court she was eating lunch in the office towards the back of the building when she heard a colleague ask a student what had happened.
She and her colleague went out the front and said the street was “chaos”, with people screaming and running.
She said at first she thought it was a car accident.
“There was this lady screaming ‘the kid is dead’, ‘the kid is dead’,” she told the court.
She became visibly upset as she recounted how she saw ambulance workers go towards a child.
“I’m sorry, I’m very emotional,” she told the court.
She said she also saw a man lying on the ground and said people were “trying to hit the man”, and women were trying to urge them to wait for the police, and said “we don’t do things like that here”.
She said she saw people go to the man who tried to “reanimate” him and that is when she saw his face.
“Someone came to check on him and they sat him down, and that’s when I saw his face and recognised him,” she said.
Under cross-examination, Ms Yaya said women moved to allow the man to be tended to, and it was at this point she saw his face and said she recognised him.
She said she and her colleague “circled to see his face better and, yes, it was him”.
She said she was sure it was the same man who walked into her workplace earlier.
Asked if it was possible she heard from someone else about the scar on the face of the suspect, and amid the “disorder and confusion” she was absolutely sure the man who walked into her workplace also had a scar, she said: “I remember the man had a scar on the left side of his face, where exactly I don’t really remember.
“I’m sure of what I saw.”
Earlier, Patricia Byrne, who was shopping near the Jervis Street area on that day, said she was walking towards second-hand shops when she heard a man dressed in dark clothing who she said was being “quite aggressive”.
She said she noticed he crossed in front of a person when he said “shit Irish, shit f****** Irish”, before moving on and saying the same thing to a group of people.
“I actually said ‘not funny’ to the group of people because they were laughing,” she told the court.
Four exhibits were also shown to the jury, including a beige sleeveless coat belonging to Ms Flynn, which was found hanging on the railing outside a hotel in Parnell Square.
They were shown a black and navy child’s jacket with a fur hood, obtained from the reception of the same hotel.
They were also shown a pink and green unicorn schoolbag and a child’s black jacket, the latter of which the court heard appeared to be bloodstained, obtained from the ground-floor toilet of a school.
The trial, under Mr Justice Tony Hunt, continues on Monday.
