The testimony of a witness was challenged on the stand yesterday during the trial of Riad Bouchaker. 

The 52 year old man faces eight charges, including the attempted murder of three school children, arising from an alleged knife attack on Dublin’s Parnell Square in November 2023. 

Mr Bouchaker denies all the charges against him. 

Yesterday, the court heard from Oisín Murphy, who was cycling home on his lunch break and looking at the inner city architecture as he did so. 

On All Rise: The Riad Bouchaker Trial, Newstalk’s Court Correspondent Frank Greaney recounted Mr Murphy’s testimony. 

“His attention was drawn to a group of schoolchildren standing in a line and a man walking past them down the street towards O'Connell Street,” Mr Greaney recalled. 

“What caught this person's eye was that when this man turned around after he had walked past the last child was that he then took out a very large knife from his jacket. 

“Mr Murphy said it had been concealed up until that point and in one movement he said this man grabbed a child and planted the knife multiple times into her chest and neck.” 

Mr Murphy described the attacker as a middle aged man in his 50s who had tanned skin. 

He added that he wore a baseball cap and jacket. 

“He said that as soon as he saw the action with the knife, a very disgusting thing to see as he put it, he said he stopped immediately and he just said, ‘What the fuck’,” Mr Greaney recounted. 

“He said it was a bizarre thing to see and then he stood to demonstrate the stabbing motion that he had witnessed; he said it was downwards into the child's neck and chest.” 

Mr Murphy recalled that she saw a childcare worker, who gave her testimony on Monday, pull the man away from one child, only for him to attack another child. 

He added that he was not sure what happened after that but recalled seeing two men grappling with that attacker, at which point he alleged that he hit him with his bikelock. 

Mr Murphy was then challenged by Mr Bouchaker’s barrister, who asked him if his memory was clear. 

The witness said he had blocked out some of it because of the trauma of it all. 

The defence barrister suggested that the CCTV footage did not support what Mr Murphy had told the court and asked for the clip to be played. 

“At this point, the witness Oisín Murphy became quite upset, repeatedly saying that he didn't want to see it,” Mr Graney said. 

“Instead the barrister used his own words to illustrate what that clip shows;  Riad Bouchaker standing at a bus stop for one minute and 39 seconds before taking the three or four strides towards the children. 

“The witness accepted that if that's what the footage shows, then his account of him walking up and down the line of school children was indeed wrong.”

Main image: Parnell Square. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie.