The 17-year-old found guilty of murdering Alan Higgins had never met him before that night, writes Joe Humphreys.
When the verdict came, there were tears on opposite sides of the courtroom. Miriam Higgins whose son, Alan, was stabbed to death two years ago this week in north Dublin gripped the hand of her daughter Catríona and wept softly.
A few feet away, the teenager convicted of the schoolboy's murder cried into the crook of his arm, his body shaking as the significance of the event hit home.
Christopher Dunne (17) from Kilbarrack, Dublin, was just 15 when he murdered Higgins outside the UCI cinema complex in Coolock. He will return to the Central Criminal Court for a sentencing hearing in 10 days' time.
Just why Dunne did it is still unclear. He had never crossed paths with Higgins before that Saturday evening.
The victim, who had overcome a bout of leukaemia in his childhood, was 17 years old. He had just finished Transition Year and had signalled plans to study architecture once he finished school.
At 8 p.m. on October 12th, 2002, he met his girlfriend at the cinema complex to play some pool and computer games. Just after 11 p.m. he left for the last bus home. He had a part-time job in a golf shop for which he had to be ready the next morning.
His girlfriend told the court she walked with him part of the way to the bus stop before kissing him goodnight.
Meanwhile, Dunne was reaching the end of a day of self-confessed drinking, drug-taking and troublemaking. This had been "kicked off" when, along with two other youths, Anthony Whelan and Michael Maher, he got an "irresponsible adult to buy them alcohol", Paul Green, prosecuting, told the court. In a statement to gardaí, Dunne said the trio went to an off-licence. "I had six cans and we smoked a joint," he told gardaí.
The prosecuting counsel said that by 8 p.m. Dunne had moved to his "warzone" of the UCI where he had "started to make a serious nuisance of himself". The trio were thrown out of a fast food outlet at the complex at 9.30 p.m. and then got into an altercation with some other boys. Some cans of Dutch Gold lager and a mini-disc were allegedly stolen.
Dunne told gardaí he wanted to get his friends to "take on" the other boys again. He went to his house and got out two knives. "I put the knives in the back pocket of my jeans and pulled my jumper over," he told gardaí.
Defence counsel Hugh Hartnett SC admitted Dunne was "out of control" on the night in question. He was "carrying a knife in his mouth like a pirate on a TV show", counsel said. There was "madness in the air" and "violence in the air".
Shortly after the trio returned to the UCI, Higgins was set upon. In his statement to gardaí, Dunne said he bumped into the teenager. "As he turned to walk away, we jumped him. The two of us fell to the ground, he was on top of me.
"I couldn't get him off me; he was bigger than me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the knife. I stuck him with the knife and he rolled off me. He cried out 'ah'. I stuck him again. I stabbed him in the side. I felt the knife go in."
Higgins suffered three stab wounds to the side of his chest. Two were superficial but a third had gone deep into his lung and caused deep bleeding and it was this which, ultimately, caused his death.
Later, Dunne, Whelan and Maher allegedly divided the spoils of their theft. A friend of the trio told the court he saw Whelan walking away with a red Nokia mobile phone, while Dunne told gardaí he split the contents of the wallet with Maher.
"There was about €115 in it," he said in his statement. "We took €50 each and spent it on smokes and drinks that night."
The following Monday, Dunne told gardaí: "I just stabbed the bloke. I am very sorry, it wasn't meant to happen that way."
Maher and Whelan pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and to robbing the victim's mobile phone and cash - a crime of which Dunne was also found guilty yesterday.
More will be heard about Dunne before sentencing. However, the court has already been told that he had struggled at school, where he attended special classes for maths, reading and writing. A clinical psychologist called by the defence said he had assessed the "brain power of the accused" and found the teenager to be "functioning in the borderline range" of intellectual capacity.
As the jury announced its unanimous verdict yesterday, Dunne's father gripped his son's hand. The pair never let go until a garda came, 20 minutes later, to lead the youngster away to custody.