A family friend staying at the home of nine-year-old Aria Thorpe initially thought she was “messing around” when he saw her lying face down on the floor, unaware she had been fatally stabbed.
Ollie Sheppard, giving evidence at Bristol Crown Court, described how he found Aria in the lounge of her house and believed at first that she was playing. It wasn’t until he noticed blood on her arm that he realized the severity of the situation.
“I called her name, Aria, thinking she was just playing,” Sheppard recounted. “Then I saw blood on her arm and knew something was seriously wrong.”
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Sheppard had been temporarily staying at the house in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset. After returning home from work just after 6pm on December 15 last year, he entered through the kitchen door. He noticed the family dogs were confined to the kitchen, as was usual when no one was home.
Describing the quiet and cold atmosphere, he said, “One of the kitchen drawers was wide open. When I went into the hallway, I found it difficult to open the door under the stairs as it was already open. I pushed through and saw Aria lying on the floor near the stairs, face down.”
Sheppard’s immediate reaction was to try and contact Aria’s mother, who was at work and initially did not answer. He left a note urging her to call him back as soon as possible before dialing 999. Following the emergency call handler’s instructions, he performed CPR until paramedics arrived.
Several neighbors also recounted hearing noises from the house that evening. Shalyna Chaplain described hearing raised voices — which she believed were two teenage boys — shouting in a distressed but non-aggressive manner for about four minutes before the sound abruptly stopped.
“It was unusual shouting; I had never heard anything like it from next door before,” Chaplain told the court. “Because my TV was loud, I didn’t initially turn down the volume and only later realized how serious it was when I heard sirens.”
Her partner, Ashley Mansell, said he heard a male voice shouting “No, no, no” in disbelief from next door sometime between 5:57pm and 6:07pm, before an ambulance arrived.
The court heard that the 16-year-old boy accused of stabbing Aria left the house after the incident and went to a nearby railway station, where he admitted to a group of children that he had stabbed someone. Minutes later, police arrested him sitting on a train.
A post-mortem examination revealed that Aria died swiftly from a single stab wound to her chest. The defendant denies charges of murder and manslaughter.
The trial, presided over by Mrs Justice O’Farrell, is ongoing.