Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 5, 1993                   TAG: 9311050135
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KARIN DAVIES ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PRESTON, ENGLAND                                LENGTH: Medium

THEY SAW HIM AND WORRIED, BUT TODDLER DIED

No one intervened.

Sixty-one people remember seeing 2-year-old James Bulger at the mall or on the 2 1/2-mile journey that ended in his tortured death in February.

Thursday, some shed tears as they testified at the trial of two 11-year-old boys accused of abducting James from a Liverpool shopping mall and stoning him to death.

"It will never leave me because it upset me so much," said Kathleen Richardson.

From her seat on the top of a bus, she saw two boys each holding one of the frightened toddler's hands, swinging him high, and then one letting go.

She shouted, "What the hell are those kids doing to that poor child?" and the bus moved on, Richardson said.

The pudgy, dark-haired boys, who may be identified only as Child A and Child B by the press, were 10 at the time of the slaying and are the youngest children ever to be charged with murder in Britain.

They have pleaded innocent, although prosecutors say Child B confessed and Child A said he was there but only stood by while the child was killed.

James strayed from his mother while she was buying sausages in the mall on Feb. 12. Minutes later, security videotapes show the toddler being led away by the two boys.

The journey ended at a lonely railroad track where James was battered to death with bricks, stones and a piece of metal. The boys left his half-naked body on the track where a train later sliced it in two, prosecutors said.

Taxi driver David Keay said he was parked outside the mall and saw two boys dragging a toddler. One lifted the child in "a bear hug sort of thing," he said.

Shedding tears, Lorna Brown whispered that she watched a toddler with a fresh bump on his forehead stumble across a street with two boys. She said she felt uneasy and glanced back, but they had disappeared.

Child B's parents listened with their heads lowered. Child A's parents have not attended the trial.

Delivery van driver Mark Pimblett said he saw a little boy, red-faced and crying, being dragged by two older boys.

"Both were trying to pull the lad but the lad was leaning back. He was trying to dig in. They were just pulling him," said Pimblett.

He drove on, glanced in his mirror, and saw one of the boys kick the toddler.

"It was not like a full blast kick - more like to persuade him to come on," Pimblett said. He said he thought the boys were "older brothers taking a little one home."

Many of the witnesses said what they saw made them uneasy, but not enough to intervene.

Ten is the youngest age children can face criminal charges in Britain. If the two boys are convicted, they will be detained indefinitely.