Two 10-year-old boys battered a toddler with bricks after luring him from a shopping mall and dumped his body on a railroad track where it was cut in two by a train, a prosecutor said Monday.
The boys, now 11, sat in the middle of the courtroom on a specially raised platform so they could see over a railing in front of them. They listened as the prosecutor started their trial by describing the toddler's ordeal.The boys, the youngest ever charged with murder in Britain, are accused of abducting and murdering James Bulger, 2, who strayed briefly from his mother in the crowded mall in Liverpool on Feb. 12.
Under British law, the boys cannot be named or identified in any way because of their age. Seated next to a social worker, each boy nodded when asked by Judge Michael Morland to confirm his identity. Morland ordered them called "Child A" and "Child B."
Child A, who was not accompanied by a relative, appeared calm as he listened to the proceedings. Child B glanced frequently at his parents, who sat to his right on wooden benches.
"The trial will make very sad reading, listening and viewing," Morland told journalists before the trial began.
Prosecutor Richard Henriques said the two boys took James on a 21/2-mile walk across Liverpool, in northwest England, before battering him to death on the railroad track.
"Bricks, stones and a piece of metal appear to have been thrown at James on that railway line," Henriques said. "He sustained many fractures to the skull."
Pathologists concluded that James was already dead when his body was hit by the train, the prosecutor told the jury of nine men and three women.
He added that although so young, the boys "both intended either to kill James or at least to cause him really serious injury and they both knew their behavior was seriously wrong."
The defendants also are charged with once skipping school to steal a child and attempting to abduct another 2-year-old boy earlier the same day James disappeared. They pleaded not guilty to all the charges in May.
The crime haunts those who watched the tragedy unfold on television.
Fuzzy security videotapes broadcast around the world showed a small blond boy who wandered away from his mother outside a butcher's shop in Liverpool. An older boy took the trusting toddler's hand and followed a friend onto a busy street. James' body was found two days later near the railroad track.(To be held criminally responsible) the child has got to know that what he did was seriously wrong, not just naughty.
Laurence Lee
Attorney for defendant
At the boys' first court appearance in February, angry crowds threw stones and eggs at police vans carrying them. The trial was moved to Preston, 30 miles north of Liverpool.
There was no violence Monday as the boys arrived at the courthouse in separate police vans with blackened windows.
The dead boy's parents, Denise and Ralph Bulger, did not attend the morning session. They are expecting a baby in December. James was their first child.
Ten is the youngest age at which children can face criminal charges in Britain.
But to be held criminally responsible "the child has got to know that what he did was seriously wrong, not just naughty," Lau-rence Lee, an attorney for one of the defendants, told The Associated Press.
Adults who are convicted of murder in Britain are sentenced to life imprisonment. A child would be detained indefinitely, receiving schooling and counseling until authorities decided he was ready to be released.
The trial was expected to last two to four weeks.