Bailey ‘ had very little chance of surviving stab wound’
A SCHOOLBOY who was stabbed in the heart during a fight in his lunch hour had very little chance of surviving the injury, a murder trial was told yesterday.
Bailey Gwynne, 16, collapsed soon after another youth plunged the knife into him at Cults Academy in Aberdeen, causing ‘catastrophic blood loss’ and cardiac arrest.
At the trial of the 16-year-old accused of murdering him, pathologist James Grieve,
‘Knife pierced the left ventricle of his heart’
62, said the knife had passed between two ribs and pierced the left ventricle of Bailey’s heart.
He said it was unlikely the three-and-aquarter-inch blade was driven into his body up to the hilt, but it was impossible to be sure of the exact depth of the wound.
What was known, he said, was it put a hole in the chamber of the heart responsible for pumping oxygenated blood around the body and that blood loss was rapid.
The jury was shown two pictures of the fatal stab wound, which was just below the boy’s left nipple.
Asked by Alex Prentice, QC, if such a wound was survivable, the pathologist s ai d t he wound was ‘exceptionally dangerous’ and that time would have been a critical factor.
He suggested a patient might survive if the injury were inflicted in an operating theatre with ‘surgeons all there scrubbed up’.
But the further the patient was from such a facility and such medical expertise the less likely it was that he or she would survive, he said.
He added: ‘Cults Academy, where my own children went to school, is not very far out of the city, but it is far enough.’
The trial has heard fifth-year pupil Bailey was stabbed on October 28 last year following a row outside the school toilets just before the school bell went to signal the end of the l unch hour. Schoolboy witnesses have testified the fight started over comments made when Bailey refused to give a fellow pupil a biscuit.
The accused, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said Bailey told the pupil: ‘You don’t want to get any fatter.’
In an attempt to defend his friend, the accused told police he said to Bailey: ‘Just like your mum.’
The ensuing fight, which one witness said lasted 20 to 30 seconds, was broken up by a teacher. But the court has heard that by then Bailey had been stabbed.
The two teenagers were told to accompany the teacher to a school office but, on the way there, Bailey collapsed. Jurors were told he had left a trail of blood from the spot where he had been knifed. Within minutes his heart had stopped and he had lost consciousness.
He was taken to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, but could not be saved.
Earlier in the week, a police interview with the accused was shown at the High Court in Aberdeen. In it he admitted buying the knife on Amazon for £40 and keeping it in his blazer pocket while at school.
A witness who described himself as the boy’s best friend said he saw the accused with a knife at the school up to 25 times.
He said he had also seen the boy
‘Exceptionally dangerous wound’
with knuckledusters in the school 40 or 50 times.
During the interview with detectives the accused said he did not mean to stab Bailey and that, when he saw him collapse, ‘he did try and save him’. When he was charged with murder at the end of the interview he held his head in his hands and sobbed.
Asked why he carried knives and knuckledusters, the boy repeatedly said he thought they were ‘cool’. He added: ‘I’ve never fitted in so I was just trying to look cool, act confident, act tough, but I wasn’t.’
The boy told police he had a job at a McDonald’s in Aberdeen, sometimes drank alcohol and got drunk and had never had a girlfriend.
He said he was self- conscious about his weight and, in the month before the stabbing, he had stopped going to PE classes because he was too embarrassed about getting changed in front of fellow pupils.
The Crown case closed yesterday after Mr Grieve had completed his evidence.
Defence counsel Ian Duguid, QC, said his client had elected not to give evidence and no witnesses were being called in his defence.
The boy denies murder and illegally having knives and knuckledusters with him at school on various occasions between August 2013 and October 2015.
The trial, before Lady Stacey, continues.