Briton put on world’s most wanted list after bar killing
A SUSPECTED British killer on the run for more than two years has been put on a global “most wanted” list.
Shane O’Brien, 30, is alleged to have stabbed Josh Hanson, 21, to death in an unprovoked attack at a London bar in October 2015.
O’Brien is believed to have fled to the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates before returning to Europe.
He has now been placed on Interpol’s most wanted list, with a £50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and prosecution.
Mr Hanson lived in Kingsbury, north-west London. His mother Tracey and sister Brooke said: “Our lives will never be the same without Josh and I would not wish our living nightmare on anyone, it is a pain no words can describe. Someone knows where O’Brien is and can change the pain and uncertainty each day brings.
“We ask you to imagine the emptiness we have been left to live with.
“Please, please, please do the right thing and make that call.”
Police say O’Brien, from Ladbroke Grove, west London, was flown out of Britain from London’s Biggin Hill airport on a privately chartered plane. He was arrested in Prague for criminal damage and assault in February last year under the Italian alias Enzo Mellonceli and released on bail.
Police say he has been travelling “extensively”, with reported sightings in Gibraltar, Nice, and Prague after an appeal for information last October.
The suspect has a distinctive tattoo on his back of an owl holding a skull.
Detective Chief Inspector Noel McHugh said: “We are looking to people in clubs and gyms he may have been involved with to come forward.
“Everyone wants to give Josh’s family the news they so need to hear.” Far left, victim Josh Hanson. Left, suspected killer Shane O’Brien, and right, the distinctive tattoo on his back of an owl holding a skull