MANIAC’S STAB THREAT 24HRS BEFORE ATTACK
Loner who slashed six in bloodbath warned of knife spree the day before – as injured policeman says: ‘I’ll never forget this’
THE knifeman who went on a bloody rampage in a city hotel and seriously injured six people had threatened to go on a stabbing spree only 24 hours earlier, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Sudanese asylum seeker Badreddin Abadlla Adam, 28, told a friend he wanted to ‘knife someone’ – but although the chilling warning was shared with an official working for the Home Office, it was never reported to the police.
The revelation comes as heroic constable David Whyte, 42, whose face was slashed as he tried to tackle the lone attacker, told from his hospital bed how he would ‘never forget’ the terrifying ordeal.
Adam, described by friends as a ‘loner’, was shot dead by police during the bloodbath on Friday at Glasgow’s Park Inn hotel, which has been housing asylum seekers during the pandemic.
Yesterday, one of the knifeman’s friends, a Yemeni asylum seeker named Siraj, revealed how Adam had made the horrifying knife threat on the day before he carried out bloody attack.
Siraj said: ‘I was talking to him and I was asking
him how his day was and he told me, “I want to attack someone with a knife”. He mentioned one of the hotel workers and he mentioned two rooms next to him.
‘I said, “No, you don’t need to hurt anyone, it’s fine”, but he started to say, “They hate me and I hate them”. I don’t know where he got those feelings from. There had never been any arguments. He said, “They are against me”.
‘The hotel has thin walls – you can hear the room next to you and everyone can hear each other, so he was saying they were making noise just to disturb him. This wasn’t a joke, nobody jokes about this.
‘I reported it to the reception and they said they would take it seriously. Then the day of the crime, a housing manager spoke to me at about 9.30am.
‘He let me repeat everything that I said to the reception the night before and he said, “OK, I will talk to the boy and we will see”.’
It is understood that other Sudanese asylum seekers had also become alarmed by Adam’s strange behaviour and made their concerns known to a Glasgow-based liaison worker.
The worker is said to have phoned staff at the hotel reception desk at 11pm the night before the attack to pass on concerns.
It is also believed that minutes before the assault, Adam had a telephone consultation with an immigration solicitor and the liaison worker.
It is not known whether the three of them were discussing his pleas to return to his home country of Sudan.
Shortly afterwards, mayhem erupted. At 12.50pm Adam produced a knife and embarked on a bloody rampage that left six people seriously injured.
Witnesses described a ‘bloodbath’ at the hotel, with one receptionist seen falling to the floor ‘gasping for air’ after being stabbed. The knifeman then lashed out at another staff member, who staggered outside before collapsing in a pool of blood. The hotel handyman was also attacked and left with a ‘big puncture wound’.
The maniac is then said to have run through the hotel knifing residents on the stairs and in the lift. One shaken eyewitness described seeing the walls of the reception spattered in blood.
An asylum seeker and former policeman named only as John said he heard screaming and rushed downstairs. He said: ‘I got worried and I went out to check what was going on. I opened the door of the lift and there was blood all over the walls.
‘I took the stairs, went down, and the reception was full of blood, it was everywhere.’
John then discovered a friend, a male receptionist at the hotel, who had been left for dead by the attacker.
He added: ‘There was a guy behind the counter fighting for his life, he looked to have been stabbed in the stomach.
‘I reassured him and went to call for help. In the entrance there were two police officers assisting another receptionist that was stabbed. I know them, so it’s very sad to see.’
Within minutes, the knifeman was cornered by armed police and shot dead.
One of the injured, a hotel resident, is said to be 17-year-old Mohamed Mansarie from Sierra Leone. Resident Beatrice Onwuka, 37, from Nigeria, said another of the stabbed refugees was teenager Sultan Mohammed, also from Sierra Leone.
PC Whyte was the first officer on the scene and tried to tackle the knifeman to the ground.
The father of two is currently in a stable but critical condition at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow and is receiving treatment for a stab wound to his face.
Police Scotland have not confirmed any names of those injured, but did say that they included people aged 17, 18, 30, 38 and 53.
Siraj said: ‘I do not know if the housing manager should have done more, but for me I am still suffering because of what happened. The image and the screaming and the blood everywhere – the police, the dogs – it is all still there.’
He added: ‘I woke up to the alarm. I thought it was normal because every week they do two to three fire tests. I was sitting on my bed playing on my phone.
‘Suddenly someone calls me and says there is a fight in the hotel. I went out and suddenly the police were there and the stairs were covered in blood.’
About 100 residents were in the hotel, on the city’s West George Street. Siraj said that at 2pm on Friday, after the rampage, they were moved to a bar opposite the building, before police escorted them to the Hallmark Hotel on Washington Street.
One resident, Abdal Nasser, 22, said the knifeman had not spoken to him before the attack, but added: ‘I saw him with a knife in his hand. It is a shock for me. I am sorry for all the people he hurt.’ Siraj said: ‘I feel emptiness, it’s not easy.
I’ve never seen someone dying before. We were all so scared.
‘I tried to cry. I am still closed inside. I have such huge pain and I couldn’t sleep last night. I tried to sleep, to do anything to sleep. I couldn’t.’
Adam – whose name was confirmed by police last night – is said to have arrived in Scotland six months ago after travelling from Sudan to escape persecution. He went first to France and then to Belfast. He
‘I’ve never watched someone dying before’