Nine-year-old Aria Thorpe’s death from a knife wound to the chest leaves teen assailant baffled
A 16-year-old boy told a group of youths he was a murderer after stabbing a nine-year-old girl to death, Bristol Crown Court was told.
Confession at the railway station
The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, walked to a railway station in Weston-super-Mare shortly after the fatal incident in December last year. Approaching a group of young people, he declared: “You’ll see it on the news later.” He then told them, “I was playing around with a knife. (She) walked into the knife. I accidentally stabbed her with a really big knife.”
To one acquaintance he said: “Yo, I’m a murderer. I accidentally killed someone.”
A child present later told police the defendant asked if he could search something on Google. He then said: “I’m done for. Why have I done this?” While one of the youths distracted him, another rang the police. Officers arrested the teenager minutes later, finding him sitting on the floor of a train carriage waiting to leave the station.
Prosecutor Ray Tully KC told the jury that, according to the defendant, Aria had either “walked” or “run” on to the blade of the knife as he was holding it. The teenager’s Google search, conducted moments after the stabbing, was for the term “What happens if you kill”.
The stabbing
Aria Thorpe, aged nine, suffered a single stab wound to the chest at a house in Weston-super-Mare. A post-mortem examination found she would have “died very swiftly from her injury”. Her body was discovered by a friend of the family, who alerted emergency services.
In a prepared statement to detectives, the defendant said: “I grabbed a knife and stabbed her in the chest. I didn’t use a lot of force, but it was a big knife. I don’t know why I did it, it just happened. I walked over and stabbed her. She fell to the floor. I left and went to the train station to get a train and to get away.”
Aria’s family have described her as “the most beautiful little soul – happy-go-lucky, full of light, and joy”. Her father, Tom Thorpe, said their hearts were “broken in a way we never imagined possible”. He recalled cherished memories, including a trip to Disneyland and everyday moments like preparing her breakfast.
The court heard that the prosecution placed significant emphasis on the defendant’s use of his mobile phone. Mr Tully told the jury the teenager had had his phone confiscated prior to the incident and that it represented “freedom” to him. Police examination of the device revealed he was a “heavy user” and had had no more than three and a half hours of sleep the night before the alleged murder.
“A big part of any young person’s life these days is their use of a mobile phone. It is the means by which they communicate with each other and the rest of the world,” Mr Tully said. “That appears to have been no different for the defendant. As he said during the police interview, his mobile phone represented ‘freedom’ to him – it was that important to him. As part of the investigation, the police have done some work to build up a picture of his use of his phone. The picture that emerged is of someone who was certainly a heavy user of his phone.”
Defence claims accident
The teenager denies both charges of murder and manslaughter. Mr Tully, outlining the defence case, said the defendant admits holding the knife at the time of the fatal wound but claims the stabbing was an accident. “He says at the time they were ‘playfighting’ when he ‘jabbed’ the knife towards Aria, that was done in order to ‘scare her’,” the barrister said. “He expected her to ‘flinch’. Instead ‘she moved towards him and was fatally wounded’.”
“He denies that he bears any criminal responsibility for the death of Aria. He says it was an unfortunate accident. For that reason he has pleaded not guilty to both count one and count two.”
The trial before Mrs Justice O’Farrell continues.
