It took just five seconds for a large man with a carving knife to leave a bubbly five-year-old girl “clinically dead” at Parnell Square. While feverish work by medics managed to avert her death, the girl, who went to school in pink runners on what should have been an ordinary November day, can no longer walk and her brain and other injuries are so severe that she will need 24-hour care for life.This week, Riad Bouchaker (52), a native of Algeria of no fixed abode, was found guilty of attempted murder of the girl and two other children. The attack happened as a group of young children stood in a line outside their school on Parnell Square East on the afternoon of November 23rd 2023, waiting to be taken to their creche.It was over within 15 seconds. In the first five seconds, Bouchaker lunged towards the children with a new 36cm Chef Aid carving knife and stabbed the five-year-old in the heart.Leanne Flynn, the childcare worker stabbed by Riad Bouchaker who was found guilty yesterday. Photograph: Collins Courts It took him another three seconds to stab childcare worker Leanne Flynn in the back when, showing immense courage, she tried to stop him. Having cast the seriously injured Flynn aside, she said Bouchaker turned back towards the children, slashing, stabbing and “jabbing ferociously” with the knife. Shouting, “he has a knife!” Flynn urged the children to run and tried to pull some to safety even as she became lightheaded due to blood loss. Amid chaos and confusion, and within what trial Judge Tony Hunt estimated as another seven seconds, Bouchaker was disarmed and brought to the ground by the combined brave actions of horrified passersby from Ireland, France and Brazil. Trainee chef Alan Lorena Guille, then aged 17, wrenched the knife from Bouchaker’s hand. In his evidence, he was dismissive of minor scratches to his hand and face sustained during the encounter. Delivery driver Caio Benicio hit Bouchaker on the head with his bike helmet while Warren Donohue, who had been celebrating his daughter’s 11th birthday in Burger King, punched him in the face and kicked him on the ground “to make sure he stayed down”. Siobhán Kearney was about to go back into the nearby Rotunda Pillar Room for the inquest into the Stardust fire that had killed her brother Liam when she heard Flynn scream. She raced across the road and jumped on Bouchaker’s back. Cyclist Oisín Murphy hit Bouchaker on the head with his bike lock. Eder Nascimento Dos Santos saw the knife on the ground and took it away to prevent other people from getting hurt. While waiting for gardaí to arrive, Kearney, declaring “we’re not f***ing savages”, formed a protective cordon with another woman to prevent further injuries to Bouchaker as he lay on the ground. Her human decency was not replicated by those who rioted in Dublin later that evening, seeking, as defence counsel put it, to “turn us one against the other”.The trial heard poignant evidence from the mother of the seriously injured girl. In a phone call at 1.45pm on November 23rd, a sobbing creche worker gave the woman the shocking news that her daughter had been stabbed. The mother became tearful when telling of her race across the city to the scene to see emergency responders working on her daughter as she lay on the ground. Other parents spoke of panic and fear upon learning of the attack and rushing to their children. Parnell Square’s central location and proximity to hospitals meant medics and other first responders were quickly on the scene and 16 eyewitnesses came forward. Due to the speed at which the attack unfolded and concluded, the chaos surrounding it, and the recognised frailty and fallibility of human memory and the impact of witnessing traumatic scenes, it is unsurprising that the eyewitness accounts did not always tally with each other or with CCTV. Some spoke of children being “swivelled around” by the attacker so their backpacks would not be an obstacle. Several denied suggestions their accounts may have been influenced by what they might have seen in media reports. The CCTV was described by Hunt as an objective “yardstick” against which to assess the eyewitness evidence. He also considered that Flynn probably had the clearest view of the incident as it unfolded.It was only towards the end of the prosecution case, during the seventh and final recorded Garda interview with Bouchaker on December 21st 2023, carried out after he had spent three weeks in hospital, that the burning question was asked. “Why? Why children?” asked Det Garda Gary Moran.Bouchaker repeatedly said, via a French-Arabic interpreter, he was “sick”, often gesticulating towards his head and referring to pain in his shoulder. When shown CCTV of the attack, he said: “Someone who is not in the right state of his mind and the families of the children when they see this, they are free to do what they want. I am sick, for 140 years, I did not have a cent, how am I supposed to live? I’m sick.”Garda Gary Moran who gave evidence in the trial of 52-year-old Riad Bouchaker.