Security guard tells of scene as Reading triple-murder suspect Khairi Saadallah was arrested – as suspect’s brother says he was ‘defending himself’

Now this is really weird. Either the guard recognised him, which is why he noticed but is being discreet. That, I think is the most likely explanation; Reading isn’t a huge town and a security guard is trained in observation and would indeed have had cause to remember that face. Either that or it’s a conspiracy theorists dream. Probably one master-minded by lizards. 

From the Daily Mail

A security guard has revealed he saw the moment the suspect of the triple murder in Reading was rugby tackled by police yesterday, stating his hands were so covered in blood that it looked like he put them in ‘a bucket of red paint’. 

Sydney McDonald, 65, has revealed how he saw the suspect being detained by police. 

He said: ‘I had just finished work at about 7.10pm and as soon as I came out of the shop, there were about four police cars, they turned around in the middle of the road, they were driving pretty fast. There was a guy and I saw him pointing to a man and saying ”There he is, there he is”. If he hadn’t, they would have missed him.

‘He was running really fast, properly fast. They put the emergency brakes on, jumped out of the car and rugby-tackled him to the floor. . . They put the handcuffs on, he wasn’t putting up a fight or anything like that, they picked him up and put him in the van, he just sat there all quiet, he wasn’t saying nothing.’ 

The photograph is captioned: Sainsbury’s security guard Sydney McDonald, 65, who saw the Reading terror suspect being rugby-tackled to the ground by police

Earlier I found details of Saadallah’s most recent court appearances and convictions for crimes of violence. I only put the links but I need not have worried as the details were all over the internet within a couple of hours. Saadallah seems to have a problem with authority figures. Last year he was in court several times charged with assaulting an emergency worker, a security guard in Sainsburys who caught him shoplifting and finally a judge who was trying to sentence him. These were described as ;non-serious offences. I suppose compared with terrorism they are. But there was a time that assaulting a judge would have been taken a bit more seriously. I can’t actually remember a Judge ever being assaulted but 40 years ago assault on a court clerk was pretty serious. That wasn’t me. That was my colleague who was standing in the place where I had quite recently been, he having seen the kick coming and nudged me out of the way. But I digress. This is the report from the Reading Chronicle dated 22nd August 2019.

Sydney McDonald told a jury that the man in the dock, Khairi Saadallah, had become enraged when, as a guard, he had accused him of stealing a bottle from the Sainsbury’s store. Yes, it’s the same man, unless there are two of them of that name working for Sainsbury. Sydney is no longer a common name, and the ‘y’ is the less usual spelling. 

The 25-year-old defendant had punched Mr McDonald in the face, rushed at him with a broken bottle of a wine and whipped his face with a belt, the jury was told. However, a barrister defending Saadallah argued it was Mr McDonald who had punched the defendant twice in the face after following him out of the supermarket.

The security guard said he believed Saadallah, of Jimmy Green Lane, Reading, had stolen a bottle of alcohol and so, in his role as the only on-duty security guard in the evening of January 16, he had said to the defendant: “Excuse me, I’ll have the bottle back please. . . .This defendant was aggressive from the very moment that Mr McDonald confronted him. This defendant, the Crown says, hit Mr McDonald in the face. Mr McDonald went to defend himself. Mr McDonald fell on to the floor. At this, this defendant reaches down, picks up part of that broken bottle and tries to go towards Mr McDonald with that, with the intention to harm him. We see their defendant remove the belt from his waistband, wrap it around his hand and swing it towards Mr McDonald.”

Saadallah maintained he was the victim of an assault, claiming Mr McDonald had been racist to him and had hit him a number of times in the face. Saadallah was charged with affray, assault by beating and two counts of having an offensive weapon, in relation to the broken bottle and his belt.

Judge Emma Nott, told the jury at Reading Crown Court that the issue was whether Saadallah had acted in self defence.

Update Monday morning

After witnessing Saturday’s arrest, Mr McDonald recalled: ‘When he attacked me outside the shop he broke a bottle and threatened to stab me and I defended myself. I put him to the floor, held him there … and he couldn’t get away from me and I held him until the police came.’

He added: ‘If I couldn’t have defended myself he probably would have killed me. But I knew how to handle it. He pulled the bottle of alcohol out that he had nicked from Sainsbury’s then he smashed the bottle and came at me. He punched me in my face and I hit him back, his nose was bleeding. I kept him down on the floor until the police came. I thought he had a knife because of the way he was behaving.’

The Saadallah family rather like the accusation of racism. Further down the Mail report.

Meanwhile, Saadallah’s brother Mo slammed his arrest for terror and wrote on Facebook: ‘This is not true. Khairi defended himself…racist countries. Freedom for my brother!’ 

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2 Responses

  1. All 3 fatal victims were gay. Looks like a homophobic hate crime but he media are keeping very quiet about this one.

  2. You are not the only person pondering that – Douglas Murray made the same point in the Spectator yesterday.
    I was waiting to see who the other people stabbed, who have thankfully recovered were, but there has been nothing, no hospital statement, not interview about my narrow escape, nothing. Not that I want their peaceful convalescence disturbed for my curiosity, but one does wonder.

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