The terror suspect accused of stabbing three people to death in Forbury Gardens, Reading, seemed a ‘normal, genuine guy’ according to a friend he made while enrolled as a student in Bury, despite a sizable list of offences even prior to the horrors he committed last weekend.
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Khairi Saadallah, 25, who was granted asylum in the UK from Lybia, was known to MI5 prior to Saturday’s fatal knife attack, but the threat he posed was considered to be insubstantial.
A friend of his, Kieran Vernon, told BBC News that Khairi was a ‘normal, genuine guy’ who he would often smoke cannabis with:
He seemed like me or you. Whenever we used to meet up we used to talk about drinking whisky and how different ganja affects the different thinking of mind.
And that’s pretty much all we’d chat about.
Not sure if Kieran knows this, but Khairi already had six previous convictions for 11 crimes between June 2015 and January last year which included racially aggravated assault, knife offences and criminal damage.
In 2018 he called a police officer a “slave” and spat in her face while being detained under the Mental Health Act after reports he was attempting suicide.
The same year he admitted possessing a bladed article and criminal damage after being found “very drunk” by police and with a butter knife in his waistband, claiming he was “out for revenge” after being “attacked” and left with a head injury that required stitches.
While in custody he defaced a copy of the police code of practice “with his own excrement”. Yup, he literally pooped on the police code of practice.
In January 2019 he struck a security guard in the face with his belt after the guard caught him shoplifting from Sainsbury’s in Friar Street in Reading town centre.
Later that year he was jailed for 10 weeks after spitting at District Judge Sophie Toms as she sentenced him at Reading Magistrates’ Court for two previous convictions.
According to court papers, Khairi had a history of debt and homelessness, alcohol and substance misuse, and “suffered from the effects of” post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and a personality disorder. The documents also described him as “aggressive and unpredictable”.
So I guess his buddy Kieran is either an extremely poor judge of character or Khairi was genuinely just a top bloke every time they got together. Well it turns out he’s a murderous, racist lunatic who shouldn’t have been free to roam the streets in the first place and once again this has resulted in the senseless deaths of regular, decent British citizens.
Some outlets seem to be suggesting that Khairi’s cannabis use was a driving factor behind what he did, which I think is a pretty lazy way of looking at it. Then again just like drinking heavily 24/7 will screw your brain up, so will smoking weed all day. Especially when you compound it with debt, homelessness, depression and PTSD. Either way, this is a tragedy that could have and should have been preempted.
Thoughts with the friends and families of his three victims and the three others who were also injured during the attack. A police cordon remains in place around Forbury Gardens.
For footage of two Palestinian boys with large knives attacking Israeli police and being shot to death, click HERE.
