Witness recalls trying to convince Azzam Raguragui ‘he was going to make it’

A teenager who was stabbed during a row in a park in Dublin last year told a friend who came to help him that he believed he was going to die, the Central Criminal Court has heard.

The witness said he ran to Azzam Raguragui (18) when he saw he had been injured during the fight, which followed a dispute between two groups of teenagers over a stolen bicycle.

“I was telling Azzam he was going to make it and he was telling me he was going to die,” the witness told prosecution counsel James Dwyer SC.

Azzam suffered five stab wounds during the melee and later died in hospital.

The 17-year-old accused in the trial, who cannot be identified because he is a minor, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not guilty to the murder of Azzam at Finsbury Park, Dundrum on May 10th, 2019.

The deceased’s mother broke down in court as her son’s final moments were recounted by the witness. Mr Justice Paul McDermott asked the jury to leave the court for a period and, when they later returned, he said that cases of this kind generate “real and understandable emotions particularly to those who have suffered loss”.

The judge explained that the court deals with matters in a clinical way, which although appropriate, “brings its own effects and causes emotions to run very high”.

He asked the jury to put aside emotion and said that while this may seem “aloof or cold”, their job was to consider and analyse the facts in a dispassionate way.

Stolen bicycle

The jury heard from another witness who was involved in the fight in the park. He said he and Azzam and a group of friends had earlier been in Dundrum, where a dispute with friends of the accused over a stolen bike began.

He said that later that evening he was with his friends in Finsbury Park when the accused and others approached. The two groups talked for a time but then Azzam and a member of the other group walked away. They talked privately for a time before the other boy “boxed” Azzam in the forehead.

The witness said a fight then broke out and in the middle of the melee he saw Azzam on the ground trying to kick the accused, who had stabbed him.

“He couldn’t do much because he was getting stabbed but he was backing away on his back and his legs kicking,” the witness said.

The fight ended suddenly and the witness ran to his friend and waited for an ambulance to come.

“It is like you’re in a dream that really did not happen,” he said.

After the ambulance left he went to a local mosque, believing Azzam would recover and they would have a laugh about it all later.

When he found out that night that Azzam had died, he said he was “shocked”.

“None of us thought that Azzam was going to die,” he said. “When we got the news I was just shook. I couldn’t accept it. I didn’t want to accept it.”

Under cross examination, the witness denied a suggestion by Michael Bowman SC that he and his friends at the mosque agreed to say that the first punch was thrown by a member of the accused’s group.

He insisted that the fight broke out after Azzam was punched.

The trial continues in front of Mr Justice McDermott and a jury of six men and six women.