Boy accused of murdering Aria Thorpe was 'playfighting', jury told

A teenager accused of stabbing a nine-year-old girl to death was "playfighting" with her before she "moved towards the knife", a court has heard. The 16-year-old, who cannot be named because of his age, denies the murder and manslaughter of Aria Thorpe at a house in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset, on 15 December last year. On day one of the trial at Bristol Crown Court, Ray Tully KC, prosecuting, told the jury the defendant admitted "he had hold of the knife in his hand at the time the fatal wound occurred". Tully said the boy had expected Aria to "flinch" when he "jabbed the knife" towards her in an attempt to "scare her". A post-mortem examination found Aria "died quickly" from a single stab that pierced through her heart and punctured her lung. The wound would have required "mild force" as a minimum, the pathologist's report said. After Aria was injured, the teenager walked to a nearby railway station where he told young people gathered there he had stabbed a child, the jury 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." The court heard he told one of