A 14-year-old boy smirked and laughed after thrusting a knife into the neck of the 12-year-old Liverpool schoolgirl Ava White, a court has heard.
The boy, who cannot be named, has gone on trial accused of murdering Ava when she went with friends to watch the switching on of the Christmas lights in Liverpool city centre on 25 November last year.
Ava and the boy got into a row after she took exception to him filming her messing around – footage that was intended for Snapchat.
The boy admits a charge of having an offensive weapon but denies murder. The prosecution said the boy would claim he stabbed Ava in self-defence.
Charlotte Newell QC, prosecuting, told the jury on Monday that Ava was part a group of 10 children aged between 11 and 15 who gathered in an area behind the Royal Court theatre.
Four small bottles of vodka were being drunk, mixed with soft drinks. The group were “messing around, sitting in plant pots, sitting on top of each other, sitting on the floor, cuddling each other, dancing, singing, pulling up plants and throwing them at each other, and plainly in high spirits”, Newell said.
They were moved on by a security guard and ended up in another street where they continued to lark around, the court heard. It was here that a group of four boys aged 13 to 15 started filming “Ava’s antics”, said Newell. “In due course that footage was to be distributed via the social media platform Snapchat – footage of Ava messing around on the street.”
Ava approached the boy and asked him to stop and to delete the footage. The court heard that the boy reacted by stabbing her in the neck with his flickknife, causing catastrophic bleeding that was to prove fatal.
Newell said the boy would claim it was self-defence. “Doubtless she was angry with him and doubtless he didn’t like that,” she said.
There was pushing and shoving. “But his reaction to 12-year-old Ava confronting him in that way was not to … slap her or punch her or try to grab her arms or to ask anybody in the surrounding group for assistance.”
Instead, Newell said, the reaction “to 12-year-old Ava was to reach for his knife” and rather than waving it around to warn her off, or shouting, “I’ve got a knife”, it was to “thrust that knife into the neck of this unarmed child”. It was with the equivalent force of a “firm punch”, Newell said.
The incident was over in 20 seconds and all four boys ran away, with the defendant discarding the knife in undergrowth and his coat in a wheelie bin, the court heard.
He would first tell police that he had not been in the city centre that night, but at a friend’s house playing Call of Duty, said Newell. Then he said another person committed the act. Neither story was true, said Newell. “His reaction at the time was to smirk, to laugh and to run away, leaving Ava to die whilst he sought to distance himself from his actions.”
In one police interview, the court was told, he said Ava had tried to hit him and that it then “just went all weird”. In the interview, he then began to cry and it was suspended. When it resumed, he was asked if he had acted in self-defence and replied: “No comment.”
Members of the public and staff at Liverpool One shopping centre were drawn to Ava’s screaming, and attempts were made to stem the bleeding. She was taken to Alder Hey hospital, where “she gained consciousness but became very distressed”, said Newell. “She was taken to a hospital bed and as that happened she went into cardiac arrest. Every effort was made to save her life.”
The judge, Mrs Justice Yip, told the jury that the defendant had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and they might see him using a fidget toy to aid his concentration. He was also accompanied by an intermediary.
She reminded the jury to approach the evidence “calmly and dispassionately” and not be influenced by an “emotional reaction or sympathy you have for anyone involved.”
About 20 of Ava’s family and friends were in court for the trial at Liverpool crown court.
The boy also denies an alternative charge of manslaughter. The trial, expected to last three weeks, continues.
