Boy B told garda he believed Boy A's injuries were caused by Ana, court hears

One of the two boys who denies murdering schoolgirl Anastasia Kriegel told a garda he believed that injuries the other accused said he suffered in an assault by older boys were actually inflicted by Ana.

Boy B told garda he believed Boy A's injuries were caused by Ana, court hears

One of the two boys who denies murdering schoolgirl Anastasia Kriegel told a garda he believed that injuries the other accused said he suffered in an assault by older boys were actually inflicted by Ana.

On a day of wide-ranging evidence, the parents of one of the two boys said their son was "shook" and "rattled" and told them he had been beaten up on the evening the 14-year-old girl went missing. The court also heard that the same boy told a garda who was taking DNA swabs from him that Ana had put her hand across his shoulder and chest and told the garda: "This may be helpful."

The accused, who are both 14, cannot be named because they are minors. They have each pleaded not guilty to murdering Anastasia at Glenwood House, Laraghcon, Clonee Road, Lucan on 14th May last year. Boy A is further charged with the 14-year-old’s aggravated sexual assault in a manner that involved serious violence to her. He has also pleaded not guilty to that count.

Detective Garda Marcus Roantree of Ronanstown Garda Station told prosecution counsel Brendan Grehan SC he met with Boy B and his mother On May 17, 2018. The boy told him he was nervous because he was one of the last people to be seen with Ana and he knew she was now missing.

He explained that he met Ana that Monday, May 14, because Ana wanted to go out with Boy A but Boy A did not want to go out with her. Boy A asked him, he said, to get Ana so he could "break the news to her".

Boy B said he wasn't that friendly with Ana but agreed to do it. He called to her house at about 5pm and they walked to a spot in the local park.

Boy B said Ana showed him a picture of herself wearing a white hoodie and sitting on a chair, tied up and blindfolded. She said her ex-boyfriend had taken the photo.

He left her with Boy A at about 5.21pm. He was, Det. Gda Roantree noted, "quite specific" about the times which the garda found "unusual".

He saw Ana again a short time later and she was upset. He asked her how she was but she didn't respond so he walked away. When he looked back there was no sign of her, he said.

Boy B also told Det. Gda Roantree that Boy A called to his house on May 15, the day after Ana went missing. That was when, he said, he found out that Boy A had been assaulted on the Monday and he said Boy A also spoke about the alleged assault the following day in school.

Boy B told Det. Gda Roantree that he thought if Boy A was beaten up by two big guys he would have more marks on his face and he believed "Ana had done this to him".

Boy A's mother told Mr Grehan that on May 14, 2018, the day Ana was last seen alive, her son arrived home from school at about 4.30pm. He came in, said hello, had a cup of tea, got changed, pottered around the house for 10 or 15 minutes and asked if he could go out.

He told her he had no homework so she let him go. He didn't say where he was going and she couldn't remember if he said he was meeting a friend. It was about 4.45pm when he left, wearing grey tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie.

He returned at about 6pm and called his mother to his bedroom. The boy's father also went and they found the boy "very, very pale and shaking. He looked rattled."

They gave him sweet tea to calm him. His mother said he had a small spot of blood on his white t-shirt, a tiny bit of blood on the inside of his lip and a patch of blood on his left knee which had a cut underneath. He was limping due to an injury to his right knee.

Some weeks earlier he had fallen and injured his wrist leaving him needing a brace that covered his arm from his fingers to halfway up his forearm. He could use the elbow, she said, but not his hand.

The injury had been aggravated and was sore.

She wanted to know exactly what happened and he told her he had left Boy B just a few minutes earlier and was walking through the park when he was grabbed from behind, brought to the ground and beaten by two youths. He managed to knock one of them to the ground with a kick, leaving his attacker bloody in the face.

"From what I remember he said they ran away," she told the court. He didn't recognise his attackers and said they didn't speak. Boy A's mother said her son had taken Jiu Jitsu lessons since he was about 10 years old.

They discussed what had happened for about 30 minutes and then decided to report the assault to gardaí. Boy A's mother later travelled with her son to Garda Headquarters in Dublin's Phoenix Park to do an EvoFit or picture identify of his attackers.

She also confirmed that she washed her son's clothes the following day to get the blood out and soaked his t-shirt overnight. Apart from the blood stains, the clothes were "scruffy and dirty looking", she said.

Scuffs across the middle of the hoodie, she said, were consistent with him having been beaten up on the ground. They were gravelly marks rather than grass stains.

The following day she heard about Ana Kriegel being missing but had never heard of her before. She called to Boy B's house before lunchtime and spoke to his mother.

She had never heard of Ana Kriegel either. Boy A returned to school on the Wednesday and was there until just after 12 o'clock.

The boy's father told Mr Grehan that he noticed his son was "shook" when he came home on the Monday evening. He was shaking, had blood on his lips, a patch of blood on the left side of his shirt and scruffy dust on his tracksuit bottoms. He was limping and his hands were dirty.

The boy told his father he had been "hopped on" in the park by two older youths but he didn't mention any names. They decided to report it, the boy's father said, adding: "Not that it would make any difference to apprehend his attackers but it's a local park, we wanted to report it so it wouldn't happen again."

He tried to call the local garda station but there was no answer so he decided to drive around with his son to try to locate and identify the attackers. His son pointed out a wooded area where he said he was attacked.

When asked, he said he had been with Boy B. He did not mention Ana Kriegel.

For the rest of the evening Boy A was "very upset and rattled", his father said, and on the Tuesday he went with gardaí to show them where he had been assaulted. Boy A also went to a garda station where his injuries were photographed and he provided a DNA sample.

Det. Gda Roantree told Mr Grehan that he took the DNA swabs from Boy A on May 16, 2018. He said he explained how DNA evidence works and Boy A told him that Ana had "put her hand across his shoulder and chest and this might be helpful." Ana was still a missing person at this time, Det. Gda Roantree said.

Detective Garda Mairead Crowley told Mr Grehan that she met Boy A at Garda Headquarters where he used the EvoFit system to create images of his two alleged attackers.

He gave good descriptions, she said, describing them as aged 17 to 20. One was six feet one inch with a narrow face, the other five feet nine inches and had a "rugby-type" build.

The stockier of the two had an earring, brown hair short on the sides with a fringe, thick brown eyebrows, flat bridge of the nose and a protruding lower lip.

The other was taller, with a long skinny face and an unhealthily skinny build. He was pale, had a moustache and "looked like an inner-city fella". He later described him as a "knacker-type of person." Two pictures were developed of the alleged attackers and these were shown to the jury.

Garda Seamus Timmins told Gerardine Small BL for the prosecution that he looked at CCTV footage in the park around the time of the alleged attack. He had the EvoFit image and description given by Boy A but saw nobody matching the description.

The trial continues in front of Justice Eileen Creedon and a jury of six men and six women.

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