Hailed heroes, Brits who tackled Sydney knifeman
Expats help corner rampaging ‘killer’... and pin him under milk crate
THREE British men were hailed as heroes last night after they chased a crazed knifeman through Sydney before pinning him down with a milk crate.
The expats only later found out that the bloodied man, who was brandishing a 12-inch kitchen knife, had allegedly used it to slit a young woman’s throat in a nearby apartment.
Lee Cuthbert and brothers Paul and Luke O’Shaughnessy, all from Manchester, were working on the fourth-floor of an office when they heard a commotion in the street below and ran out to help.
Paul, 37, a former Bury footballer, told last night how he opened the window and saw a man wielding a knife and jumping on a car bonnet.
‘You just do it, you just go for it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know whether it’s an instinct thing, but we were thinking, “right, we’ve got to get down there and do something, we’ve got to restrain this guy”.’
The trio, who run a recruitment consultancy firm in the city centre, were among a group of people who took down the alleged killer before Luke, 30, who is trained in martial arts, was able to pin his head down with a plastic milk crate.
The knifeman, named as 21-year-old Mert Ney, went on a terrifying rampage through the streets, running at pedestrians and lashing out with the knife.
Police said last night that the man, who was known to them, had arranged to meet the murdered 21-year-old woman, a sex worker, earlier that day.
A second woman was stabbed in the back in a nearby bar and was said to be in a stable condition last night.
Paul, who played for Bury more than 70 times from 1998 to 2004, added: ‘We’re a very, very close team. We’re all brothers really, so when you see brothers running, your natural instinct is to follow. The man had a knife which was covered in blood and he was saying something in Arabic.
‘He was clearly under the influence of something.’
Police Commissioner Mick Fuller praised the Britons and other helpers as ‘the highest order of heroes’, while New South Wales Police Minister David Elliot added they had acted ‘well and truly beyond the call of any citizen’.
At one point during his rampage, the man jumped on to the roof of a Mercedes, waving the knife and shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. He also yelled that he wanted police to shoot him.
Police said the offender had no known links with Islamist terror groups. They found references on Ney’s mobile phone to the recent massacre by a Right-wing fanatic in El Paso and officers also discovered a thumb drive containing material about the Christchurch attacks.
Mr Cuthbert’s mother Joanne, an NHS receptionist, said at home in Chadderton, Oldham, last night: ‘[Lee] is a very brave lad and I am very proud of him.’