Teenager on trial accused of murder of 9yr old Aria Thorpe

A teenage boy on trial for the murder if Aria Thorpe seareched online 'What happens if you kill' minutes after stabbing the nine-year-old girl to death, a court heard.

The 16-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons stabbed Aria Thorpe once in the chest at a house in Weston-super-Mare, in December last year a court was told.

A new picture of Aria Thorpe has been released today. She was nine when she died(Image: Avon and Somerset Police / SWNS)

After leaving the property where the incident took place, he walked to a nearby railway station where he told young people gathered there that he had stabbed a child, Bristol Crown Court heard.

"You’ll see it on the news later," he told them.

"I was playing around with a knife. (She) walked into the knife. I accidentally stabbed her with a really big knife."

He said to one of the group, who he knew: "Yo (name) I’m a murderer. I accidentally killed someone."

While one of the group distracted the teenager, another was able to ring the police and alert them to what the defendant was saying.

One of the children present later told police: "He said he had done something really bad and did not know what to do.”

"He asked if he could search something on Google. He then said, ‘I’m done for. Why have I done this?’"

The teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was arrested minutes later at the train station by police who found him sitting on the floor of a carriage of a train waiting to leave the station.

The teenager told detectives in a prepared statement: "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."

The teenager denies charges of murder and manslaughter.

Ray Tully KC, prosecuting, told the jury: "He admits that he had hold of the knife in his hand at the time the fatal wound occurred.

"He says at the time they were ‘playfighting’ when he ‘jabbed’ the knife towards Aria, that was done in order to ‘scare her’.

"He expected her to ‘flinch’. Instead, ‘she moved towards him and was fatally wounded’.

"Soon after the fatal incident, he told a group of young people that Aria had either ‘walked’ or ‘run’ onto the blade of the knife as he was holding it."

A post-mortem examination found Aria had suffered a single stab wound to the chest and would have “died very swiftly from her injury”.

The trial continues