Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
George’s sister on terrifying moment cop shot him dead
Gloria feared for family’s safety
The shots came into the house, we were standing at the door GLORIA NKENCHO PRIME TIME YESTERDAY
THE heartbroken sister of George Nkencho has described the terrifying moment armed gardai shot her brother outside the family home.
Officers gunned down the 27-year-old at his house in Clonee, Dublin, after the victim refused to drop the knife he was carrying.
His sister Gloria said she was standing in the hallway with her two younger siblings when bullets ripped through the house.
She added: “I opened the door when I saw my brother and I said to the guards, ‘He’s sick, move’.
“I wasn’t allowed past the entrance and I was pushed back into my house.
“I didn’t fear for my own safety, but what made me afraid was when the shots came into the house when me and my two siblings were standing right behind the door.” The armed gardai who shot George said they responded to reports of a man wielding a knife at a nearby Eurospar and post office in Hartstown, where a shop worker is believed to have suffered a broken nose.
George did not have any criminal convictions and it’s now believed he was in the midst of a mental health crisis when he refused to drop the knife he was carrying in the minutes before he was shot by gardai.
Gloria told RTE’S Prime Time it was hard to watch her brother suffer from his depression.
She said: “It could be one thing here and another thing there and before you know it, that person that was so bubbly and was so sociable, that everybody loved, you just see them suffer.
“I’ve never known a place, I’ve never known a world, I’ve never known an environment where I didn’t have my brother and now here it is.
“This is my reality now, the person that I knew, the person that I loved, has been taken away from me.”
Gloria described George as a caring and protective older brother who loved football and music.
She said: “He was charismatic, he was sociable, he was popular. He was intelligent. He was caring. He was a protector. He was the first born, he was my brother.
“All he ever cared about was playing football and music. “He made us who we are because he looked after us, and we looked up to him.”