Leanne Flynn

His attention was actually drawn to a group of eight or nine schoolchildren enjoying themselves on the street, having fun, as he described it.

He described the scene as quite idyllic.

before spotting a suspicious stocky man, as he described him, in his 50s with glasses and a moustache near those children.

He said he then saw the man move in front of them and a care worker repeatedly pulling out kids from the line while holding a knife.

And according to this witness, the attacker appeared to move up and down the line as though he wanted to get every kid, while the care worker tried desperately to pull children back and to shield them.

He described repeated downward stabbing motions aimed at the children's upper bodies,

and recalled screams from both the children and the care worker.

Like the other witnesses, he was also cross-examined yesterday.

The defence questioned him about his failure in his Garda statement to mention the childcare worker's struggle with the attacker, despite being only a yard away when all that was unfolding.

He accepted that some details only came back to him in the days afterwards and he agreed.

that traumatic events can affect memory, but he remained adamant that the accused appeared to target multiple children, repeatedly moving along that line with a large knife, as they say, striking toward their upper bodies over a period that he estimated lasted somewhere between 20 and 30 seconds.

The final witness then Clare called yesterday was a woman called Erica Hernan,

who told the jury that she witnessed part of the alleged attack from the passenger seat of her car as they waited at traffic lights at around half past one that day.

She said she noticed a group of young children lined up against railings outside alongside a woman she presumed was minding them and a man standing nearby.

She said that out of nowhere she saw what appeared to be a large kitchen knife with a black handle and according to her, the man suddenly began swinging that knife

The woman immediately went into fight mode, she said, to protect the children.

She described a struggle in which the woman tried to stop the man and get the children to safety.

She said she saw this man lift a little girl, carrying her with the knife pointed towards the child's throat while the woman fought to intervene.

She said she rolled down the car window.

She was shouting, he has a knife.