£50k reward as world cops hunt knife killer

POLICE across the world have put a suspected knife killer – on the run for nearly three years – on their most wanted lists.

A £50,000 reward is being offered for information on Shane O’brien, 30, who is thought to have fled to the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates before returning to Europe.

Police say he has been travelling “extensively” and there were reported sightings in Gibraltar, Nice in France and Prague following an appeal last year.

O’brien is alleged to have killed 21-year-old Josh Hanson in a knife attack in a bar in Hillingdon, West London, in 2015.

Mr Hanson’s mother, Tracey, and his sister, Brooke, said: “Someone somewhere knows where O’brien is and can change the pain and uncertainty that each day brings for us.

“We ask you to try and imagine the emptiness that we have been left to live with. Please, please, please do the right thing and make that call or encourage someone else to.”

The Metropolitan Police say Londoner O’brien was flown out of the UK on a privately chartered plane from Biggin Hill Airport.

He was arrested in Prague for criminal damage last February under the Italian alias Enzo Mellonceli and released on bail. Det Chief Insp Noel Mchugh said: “We are looking to people in nightclubs and boxing gyms as well as expats and any women he may have become involved with to come forward.

“A small piece of information could be the missing piece of the jigsaw that gets justice for Josh.”

O’brien is described as white, 6ft, with grey eyes, dark brown hair, a full beard and a tattoo on his back of an owl holding a skull.