Fountain Park security guard helped police catch boy 'within half an hour' of him stabbing little girl 8 times in vicious attack 20 years ago

A security guard helped police catch a boy “within half an hour” of him stabbing a little girl eight times during a vicious attack in Edinburgh 20 years ago.

Kitrina McKenzie was just nine when she was abducted from outside her grandmother’s home in Longstone, forced onto a bus and taken to an underground car park by 11-year-old Darren Cornelius at the city’s Fountain Park leisure complex where she was attacked.

On Monday, nearly two decades to the day of the shocking incident, Kitrina made a touching appeal to find the woman at a nearby bus stop who had called for an ambulance after she crawled up some metal stairs and staggered towards her soaked in blood.

And after reading the story in Monday’s Edinburgh Evening News, a former security officer who had been working at Fountain Park that day, Brian Gould, recalled the aftermath of the stabbing when he steered officers towards footage of a boy running away towards Lothian Road.

Brian Gould helped police catch the boy who attacked Kitrina McKenzie. Pictures: Michael Gillen/Supplied

Mr Gould, who was the only security officer working at the time and based in the control room, told the Evening News he had seen the children going down the stairs together but that there was nothing suspicious at this moment.

He said “I saw the wee fat lad come up the stairs and run down towards Lothian Road and she (Kitrina) walked to the bus stop and spoke to this woman and the next minute, CID and police riot vans and police cars were there and police came down to the control room and they are reporting a multiple stabbing.”

“Police thought it was a grown woman (who had been stabbed) and possibly an adult (the attacker) and I said, ‘are you sure it was not a wee boy?’ and went to the stair camera. The only suspicious thing was that he ran away up the stairs himself.

The 42-year-old, who lives in Selkirk, continued: “In those days it was tapes and the camera was a timelapse in one to three second frames, but when slowed down you could see the wee boy dropping the knife down the stair but could not see the attack.

Brian Gould, now 42, helped police trace Kitrina McKenzie's attacker in October 2000. Pic: Supplied

“As soon as they (CID) saw the CCTV they passed the description to police and literally within minutes they radioed back that they had found a guy matching his description on Lothian Road.

“I would say they caught him within half an hour (of the attack).”

Mr Gould said he received a letter from police afterwards thanking him for dealing with the incident professionally and helping them detain the person responsible.

Kitrina told the Evening News that, if it were not for the woman at the bus stop who called emergency services, she would not be here today.

The frenzied attack happened around 2pm on October 23, 2000, on the last day of the school half-term holidays.

Medics at the Sick Kids Hospital told Kitrina she was “very lucky” to be alive and that the blade narrowly missed her liver and she was also stabbed in the neck.

A children’s panel hearing ordered Cornelius, who was originally charged with attempted murder, to be locked up for 17 months in secure accommodation. He escaped prosecution as lawyers argued his mental age was below the age of eight, then the age of criminal responsibility.

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