A NEIGHBOUR of a young girl who was allegedly being stabbed multiple times by her mother told a court she heard the child’s screams coming from beyond a locked room during the alleged attack.
Despite suffering 79 stab wounds, the girl survived and told Gardaí that her mother stood over her in her bed and told her “I’m going to kill you and then I’m going to kill myself, because that is what’s best”.
The girl told Gardaí her mother used a “big kitchen knife” when stabbing her repeatedly in her bed and dragged her into a bathroom where she continued stabbing her in her stomach, chest, back, and legs.
“When she was dragging me to the bathroom, I looked back and the bed was covered in blood,” the girl told Gardaí.
The girl told Gardaí that her mother told her she feared people were going to take her away from her and that it was “best” if they both died before that happened.
The accused and her family had fled to Ireland from Ukraine in March 2022 after Russia invaded the country and were staying in temporary accommodation in the Mid West region.
On Tuesday, a neighbour gave evidence at the woman’s trial, held at the Central Criminal Court sitting in Limerick, that on the morning of the alleged attack she heard the girl screaming.
The witness said the child’s room was locked when she went to see what was going on.
The witness said she was banging on the door and asking what was going on, and when the girl’s screams did not stop the witness, contacted the emergency services, the trial heard.
The girl’s mother, who cannot be named to protect her daughter’s identity, has pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder of her child.
Under cross examination by the accused’s barrister, senior counsel Mark Nicholas, the witness agreed that prior to the alleged attack, the accused had confided in her that she was concerned about her and her husband’s mental health.
The witness said the accused told her she was suffering from mental health issues and wanted to travel back to Ukraine to get psychiatric help.
The witness said the accused called an ambulance for herself a few days prior to allegedly attacking her daughter, but said she had not gotten the medication she wanted.
The witness told the court the accused had made two failed attempts to return to Ukraine prior to the alleged attack on the girl. On both occasions she failed to get on a flight from Dublin Airport and returned to temporary accommodation in the Mid West.
The witness said that on the morning of the attack she observed the witness in a communal kitchen at the temporary accommodation property preparing food for breakfast but she did not cook the food.
The witness she noticed that a knife she normally used to prepare her own food was missing from the kitchen on that morning, September 27, 2022.
When entering her not guilty plea in court, the accused added: “I was out of my mind at that time.”
The court heard the girl was found alongside her mother with cuts and wounds all over her body and there were blood marks in the bedroom and bathroom.
Senior prosecuting counsel, Lorcan Connolly, told the jury of seven men and five women that they would have to determine, on the evidence they hear, whether or not the accused was “aware” of what she was doing, or if she was “labouring under a mental disorder” which made her lack the “necessary intent” to kill.
The accused wept in court as a DVD interview between Gardaí and the eight-year-old girl, recorded on November 4, 2022, was shown to the jury.
In the recording, the girl told Gardaí that her favourite hobbies were performing “gymnastics”, “drawing”, and “making slime”.
Outlining the alleged attack, the girl said: “I woke up, Mum had a strange look on her face, she was pacing around looking for something, then she came over to me with a big kitchen knife and started hitting me with it in the bed.”
“I saw her standing there, holding the knife over me, she stood there for about five seconds and then she started hitting me with the knife.
“I was shouting please stop, I am screaming. It looked like a big kitchen knife, big, pointy, sharp, it was in her hand.”
The girl told Gardaí: “I can remember the pain, I remember it being really painful. The most pain I felt was near my stomach, that’s where I lost most of my blood, that’s where she hit me the most.”
The girl showed Gardaí the top of her chest area where she described having a “huge wound” that would need “two to three years to heal”.
The girl said: “My mother said ‘this is what’s supposed to happen, it’s for the best, it would be better this way’.”
“I was afraid to say anything at that point, I was quiet, I think my Mum was waiting for me to just give up, I didn’t want her to feel threatened and kill me, so I stayed silent.
“I was lying on the bathroom floor, I could hear the (emergency services) outside, I heard our door being knocked down and the ambulance came.
“The doctor came over to me and put me on a mat so he could carry me out, I told him to be more gentle because it was really painful.
“The nurses were cleaning the blood and wounds and giving me medicine which was not very nice to drink.”
When asked what she and her mother did in the hours prior to the alleged attack, the girl replied she told her mum ‘I love you’ and they said prayers before going to sleep.
The trial continues.
Additional reporting by Bernie English