Witness found Aria Thorpe face down and covered in blood after stabbing

A man who found nine-year-old Aria Thorpe after she was stabbed told jurors he first thought she was “messing around” before realising she was gravely injured and covered in blood. His account to Bristol Crown Court has become central to the prosecution’s attempt to reconstruct the frantic minutes after Aria was attacked at her home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

The witness said he arrived at the Lime Close address at 18:03 GMT and found the kitchen area and the cupboard under the stairs blocked by school bags. He pushed through, shouted for anyone to answer, and then saw Aria lying face down and tucked in by the door. After noticing blood on her arm and school top, he called her mother, phoned 999 and tried CPR before emergency crews arrived. Aria died at the scene.

Prosecutors say Aria died from a single stab wound to the chest on 15 December 2025. The court has heard that a 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, denies murder and manslaughter. The prosecution says the pair had been “playfighting” before Aria moved towards the knife, and that the defendant later told others he had “accidentally stabbed her with a really big knife.”

On Monday, prosecutor Ray Tully KC told jurors the teenager left the scene at about 5.55pm and went to Worle railway station. The court heard he asked to borrow a phone from young people he knew from school and searched it for what would happen if he killed someone. Police later arrested him on a train minutes later, bringing the focus of the case back to the rapid sequence of events before emergency help reached Aria.

A family friend who returned from work found Aria’s body in the living room, surrounded by a large blood stain, and also performed CPR while calling 999. That witness evidence, alongside the account of the man who first entered the home, gives jurors two closely related but distinct views of the same scene: one from the doorway, where Aria was found face down, and one from the living room, where the scale of the blood loss became clear.

Aria’s family described her as a “beautiful soul” who was brave, kind-hearted, “happy-go-lucky, full of light, and joy.” As the trial continues, jurors are being asked to piece together how quickly a domestic scene turned into a fatal emergency, and how the first moments of confusion shaped the response that followed.