Police call fatal stabbing spree a terrorist attack
READING, England — A stabbing rampage that killed three people as they sat in a British park on a summer evening is being investigated as a terrorist attack, police said Sunday. A 25yearold man believed to be the lone attacker was in custody.
Authorities said they were not searching for other suspects and they did not raise Britain’s official terrorism threat level from “substantial.”
Three people were killed and three others seriously wounded in the stabbing attack that came out of the blue Saturday in Forbury Gardens park in Reading, a town of 200,000 people 40 miles west of London.
“Motivation for this horrific act is far from certain,” said Neil Basu, Britain’s top counterterrorism police officer, as forensics officers combed the park for evidence.
Chief Constable John Campbell of Thames Valley Police said officers were called to reports of stabbings just before 7 p.m. and arrived to find a “horrific” scene. He said a suspect was apprehended within five minutes.
Basu said “incredibly brave” unarmed officers detained a 25yearold local man at the scene. The Thames Valley force later said counterterrorism detectives were taking over the investigation.
Police have not identified the suspect, but Britain’s national news agency, Press Association, and other media outlets named him as Khairi Saadallah, a Libyan asylumseeker living in Reading.
A Reading man of that name who is the same age as the suspect was sentenced to two months in prison last year for assaulting an emergency worker. The same man was also charged last year with assaulting a judge who had sentenced him.
The BBC reported that Saadallah was investigated by British security services last year over concerns he planned to travel abroad to join a jihadi group, but that he was not determined to be a major threat.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who met security officials, police and senior ministers on Sunday for an update on the investigation, said he was “appalled and sickened” by the attack.
“If there are lessons that we need to learn” or legal changes needed to prevent such attacks, “then we will learn those lessons and we will not hesitate to take action where necessary,” Johnson said.