Children thought teenager was ‘joking’ about stabbing girl - court hears
A 16-year-old boy is on trial accused of stabbing schoolgirl Aria Thorpe in Weston-super-Mare
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A group of children thought a teenage boy was joking when he allegedly told them he had fatally stabbed a nine-year-old girl, a court heard.
The 16-year-old boy is on trial accused of stabbing schoolgirl Aria Thorpe in the chest at a house in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset on December 15 last year.
After leaving the property, he was said to have walked to a nearby railway station where he told young people gathered there that he had stabbed a child, Bristol Crown Court was told.
A 12-year-old girl told the jury she was with a group of friends on the railway platform when the defendant came up to them to ask what time the next train was.
“He was in a rush,” she said.
“He was sitting there looking at the time on the board and he asked if he could borrow a phone to search something, then he gave it back.”
The girl said the defendant told her Aria “ran into the knife” and he got his coat and left.
“My friend didn’t believe him. He asked people to check how fast his heart was beating. His hand was shaking like he had actually done it,” she told the court.
The witness told the jury that one of her friends jokingly asked the defendant if he had killed Aria.
“He smiled and didn’t deny, but didn’t say yeah. Everybody thought he was joking,” she said.
“So he left her on the floor. I can’t remember if he said he had called an ambulance, but he left his phone and took his coat and ran out of the door.”
Another one of the group told the jury he had let the defendant borrow his phone to do the internet search, which was later discovered to be “What happens if you kill…”
“He asked to borrow someone’s phone, he searched my phone and I was left talking to the others and then he said, ‘I killed her’,” the boy said.
“He wasn’t like sad, almost normal.”
Another boy on the platform, who knew the defendant, told the jury what he had said to him.
“He said, ‘Yo (name). I am a murderer. I accidentally killed someone.’”
“I said, ‘Yeah, I don’t believe you’. I said let me see your text messages and he said he didn’t have his phone.”
Asked to explain his comment about the phone, the teenager said: “I assumed there would be messages saying ‘What have you done and where the hell are you?’.
“I thought he was lying. I thought it was crazy if he had actually done it. Then we heard the sirens and thought maybe he’s actually done it.”
The court earlier heard a family friend who discovered Aria fatally injured thought she was “messing around”.
Ollie Sheppard described seeing her lying face down in the lounge of her home and thought she was playing so called out her name.
Ray Tully KC, prosecuting, asked: “What was your first thought when you saw her on the floor?”
Mr Sheppard replied: “She was messing around. I called her name, Aria, and pretty much I had put two and two together and I saw blood on her arm.
“My first instinct was to ring her mother. She didn’t answer because she was at work, so I left her a note she needed to contact me asap and then I called 999.”
Neighbour Shalyna Chaplain told the jury she was feeding her toddler son and they were watching the TV together when she heard shouting coming from next door shortly before 6pm.
“It was like two people shouting who were upset, rather than two people shouting at each other who were aggressive,” she said.
“It got progressively louder. It was unusual because I had not heard any shouting at that level from next door.
“It was progressively getting louder and then it stopped completely.”
Andrew Langdon KC, defending the teenager, suggested what she had in fact heard was a single male voice.
“It was probably difficult for you with the TV on. There wasn’t two male voices, but it was one, just shortly before the flashing lights arrived outside?” he asked.
She replied: “It did sound like someone was talking to another person. At the time I was fairly certain it was two voices.”
In a written statement, Ms Chaplain’s partner Ashley Mansell said he was upstairs working in a bedroom when he heard voices coming from next door.
“I heard shouting, three ‘No, no, noes’. It was said in a tone of disbelief. It immediately made me think it was an unusual thing to hear,” he said.
“It was more like a ‘can’t believe it’ no. It was a male voice, I can’t say who it was.”
A post-mortem examination found Aria had suffered a single stab wound to the chest and would have “died very swiftly from her injury”.
The teenager denies charges of murder and manslaughter.
The trial before Mrs Justice O’Farrell continues.