Driver sought divine mercy after killing knife attacker

A DRIVER who was released without charge after ploughing his car into a knife attacker to stop him killing a mother-of-two said he asked God to forgive him, but that it had been his “duty” to act.

The 26-year-old father-of-two, named only as Abraham, was arrested on suspicion of murder after running the knifeman over with his Renault in Maida Vale, west London, on Jan 24.

Abraham was hailed a hero after intervening when he saw Yasmin Chkaifi, 43, being stabbed by her exhusband Leon McCaskie.

Witnesses tried unsuccessfully to stop McCaskie before Abraham ran him over. McCaskie was pronounced dead at the scene.

Abraham, an electrician who as a child fled Chechnya with his mother after his dissident father was abducted by the regime, said: “If you see an evil it is your duty to stop it with your hands.

“If you cannot, then you should stop it by speaking out. So I was thinking: ‘How could I face God if I don’t help? It is my duty, my religion.’ In that moment I knew I had to act.”

Abraham said it was pure chance he was passing the scene at the time McCaskie attacked Ms Chkaifi, as he was running late for a job in Westminster. As he drove along Chippenham Road he heard shouting and screaming near St Peter’s Church and saw a man with a steel blade in his hand stabbing a woman on the floor three times in the chest.

“I thought the safest and quickest option was to push the man away from the woman with my car,” Abraham told the Daily Mail. “I thought: ‘I cannot go away and leave her.’”