DUBLIN—A Brazilian food delivery driver in Dublin heroically stopped the knifeman who attacked a group of young children outside their school yesterday.
The attack, which hospitalized three children under the age of 7 and a 30 year old teacher who was trying to protect them, triggered the worst riots in living memory in the Irish capital after a far right mob, described as a “lunatic, hooligan faction” by the police was whipped up by reports on social and mainstream media that the knifeman was an immigrant. The ringleaders were then joined by opportunistic rioters who looted stores, and torched buses and police vehicles.
The identity of the attacker has not been revealed but it has now emerged that the attack might have been much, much worse had it not been for the astonishing bravery and quick thinking of an immigrant who was working in Dublin; Brazilian Deliveroo rider Caio Benicio, 43.
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Benicio was on a job when he saw the attack taking place. He jumped off his motorcycle, took off his helmet, and hit the attacker with it until the attacker collapsed.
“I didn’t even make a decision, it was pure instinct, and it was all over in seconds. He fell to the ground, I didn’t see where knife went, and other people stepped in,” he told Irish news website The Journal.
Benicio said that as a father of two children, he “had to do something” and realized he could use his helmet as a weapon to disable the attacker.
While two of the children are understood not to be critically injured, one of them, a five-year-old girl, is badly hurt, as is the teacher, and both remain in a serious condition.
Benicio told The Journal he is “praying” for the girl, adding: “It’s all I am thinking of. I saw her in the ambulance, she looked so vulnerable, I had to go with gardaí then. I am waiting for news about her. I am hoping. If a child didn’t survive, I would always think, I could have been faster. I chose to have surgery on my knee recently, it made me slow to get off the bike, could I have been faster?
“If all the victims survive, I will be thankful that I was in the right place, at the right time.”
He added: “It looks like they hate immigrants. Well I am an immigrant, and I did what I could to try and save that little girl,” he said.
The violence was contained by around 11pm after 400 police officers were deployed in the city centre.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has said that 34 arrests have been made, and that “many more arrests will follow.” 13 shops were damaged and 11 garda vehicles were “either destroyed through arson or quite extensively damaged.” Three buses and one tram were also destroyed.
Ireland’s Prime Minister, known as the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said: “Today I call on us all to remember who we really are. Because we’re better than this. And it’s time we came together and reminded others who claim to speak for us, what our country really stands for.”
He said that the rioters in Dublin brought “shame on Ireland.”
