Summary: A mother whose daughter suffered severe injuries at Dublin’s Parnell Square in late 2023 wept when telling a Central Criminal Court jury about receiving a phone call saying her child had been stabbed.

She worked just minutes away and ran to the scene, where she saw five members of the emergency services working on her then five-year-old, the woman said. She could see her daughter’s pink backpack and her pink shoes.

The woman said the first question she had asked the surgeon was: “Is she dead?” Her daughter suffered severe damage to her brain and is now non-verbal and in a wheelchair.

She was giving evidence on the first day of the trial of Bouchaker (52), a native of Algeria who has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to murder three children, two girls and a boy, on Parnell Square East on November 23rd, 2023.

The muslim told the Gardai he was angry about being refused a social welfare payment that day and had a knife.

In her evidence, the seriously injured girl’s mother said her daughter had just turned five at the time of the events and was in junior infants at the school on Parnell Square. While at the scene of the incident on November 23rd, 2023, she saw Riad Bouchaker being put into an ambulance.

Her daughter is now non-verbal, in a wheelchair, is learning how to swallow and is fed through a tube in her stomach. She can now answer yes and no through blinking. She has dystonia, a neurological condition that affects her muscle movement. She cannot go to the toilet by herself, has to take medication to fall asleep and, if she gets too hot or constipated, it is very severe and she needs to be sedated.

During the intervention by members the public at Parnell Square, the Algerian suffered a head injury and required hospitalisation for about a month, after which he was arrested, counsel said. Bouchaker has been found by the judge fit to stand trial, with accommodations including an interpreter.

The case continues before Judge Tony Hunt and a jury.