“So I put the baton away and then I charged," Dundalk gardaí tell of arresting killer

Two Dundalk Gardaí, Garda Alan Lynch and Garda Damian Welby were recently awarded the Scott Medal Commendation for their brave actions in the arrest of Mohamed Morei in Dundalk in 2018.

Mohamed Morei, an Egyptian asylum seeker who claimed to be fighting for ISIS when he stabbed 24-year-old Japanese man Yosuke Sasaki to death on the Long Avenue, Dundalk was later found not guilty of murder and some other offences by reason of insanity at the Central Criminal Court.

Garda Lynch and Garda Welby, both originally from Donegal, spoke to the Democrat about how they were carrying out their regular duties on the morning of Wednesday 3rd January 2018 when they became the first two Gardaí to confront Morei.

Garda Lynch recalls driving around with his colleague Ronan Costello on warrant duty, “driving around town looking for a few candidates for court that hadn’t accepted their first invitation,” as he puts it.

He recalls how the discovery of Yosuke Sasaki’s body came across the radio and then “there was another call fairly lively after that, saying there had been an attack and a man had been stabbed, and then that somebody else had been threatened with a stick.”

Garda Welby was in fact off duty that day but was due to attend court, and as he logged on was informed by colleagues that there had been a suspected murder on the Avenue Road.

He recalls taking a free patrol car: “By chance a patrol car was free for me to take in because usually I’d take my own car in and park it at the court.”

A clear timeline of events emerged in the wake of the attacks showing that at 9am on the morning, Gardaí in Dundalk received a report that a 24-year-old man was after being fatally stabbed in the back on Long Avenue, by another man in a totally unprovoked attack.

At 9.30am an identical unprovoked stabbing of another 23-year-old man on the Inner Relief Road, Dundalk. This man was stabbed in the upper back and his injuries were not fatal.

And by 9.40am a third 23-year-old man was struck with a wooden post on Quay Street, receiving an injury to his head.
Garda Welby remembers:

“When I was going in the road had been closed off so there was a Garda at the roundabout side at the bottom of the Avenue Road.

“So he was giving me some more of the details and then as I was chatting to him all of a sudden there was more activity happening over by the Quay direction.

“There was talk that someone had been hit by a lump of wood.

“My intention was still to go to court because I was due up in it, so as I was going along the Inner Relief Road just before Oriel Auto Recoveries I spotted a fella matching a description of what had been given out and he didn’t look like somebody who was minding his own business walking.

“He was a bit irate and [there was] something going on.”

It soon became clear to Garda Welby that there was a good chance this was the man they had been searching for.

“He had a big lump of fencing post and immediately he got my attention and there was nobody else on the road either side, so I went to turn the patrol car; the first opportunity I could get was at Oriel [Auto Recoveries] and I could see him switching over, so I came across the radio to say I’d seen him.

“Subsequently, I only saw it on CCTV after inquiries, that when I had spotted him and gone to turn, he launched the post at the patrol car as well, and then got it back from the road again.”

Garda Lynch had been coming down the road when Garda Welby had spotted the man (later discovered to be 18-year-old Mohamed Morei) and approached Morei around National Tile while Garda Welby was turning.

“So after he had approached Damien (Garda Welby) on the Avenue Road Damian moved back a wee bit and let us know he was there and at that stage when Damian was turning, wherever it was that he was turning, I approached the man then and just started chatting asking him what the idea was with the stick and it was fairly clear then that he wasn’t making a whole lot of sense and he was fairly wound up so it wasn’t going well.

“I tried chatting to him until Damian landed back and at that point we drew batons and started issuing instructions instead of asking questions and got into it with him, trying to give him a few instructions, but he wasn’t playing ball.”

Both Gardaí were initially unsure exactly what sort of situation they were encountering as Garda Lynch details:

“At the time, we suspected he was carrying a knife. At that stage we knew there was a knife at the scene, there was another knife used that hadn’t been recovered and when he approached Damian initially he had the post with him.

“So we suspected he was carrying a couple of different weapons at that stage.

“The two of us stood off from one another, so the man (Morei) was looking over and back and it was fairly clear from his body language that there was absolutely no playing ball with him.

“By good fortune, an armed car came around and they pulled up and then they came in between us. There were three of them in that car, Karen Coughlan, Dave Devaney and James Kilgallon.

“They landed and drew weapons on him and still he wasn’t for backing away.

“It [the warnings] just wasn’t hitting home at all,” adds Garda Welby.

When it became clear Morei was not going to comply, Garda Lynch decided action had to be taken.

“When we had the guns drawn, I knew there was only going to be one outcome unless somebody acted.

“So I put the baton away and then I charged and wrestled him to the ground and then [Gardas Devaney and Kilgannon] came down on top of me and on my back.

“And then, when we had him restrained, then I could back away and the two boys took him by the hands and Damian put on the cuffs.

“It was just a quick run up and down you go. There was a bank behind him so it was just rugby tackling him onto the bank and when he fell down he dropped the stick.”

Describing the events, Garda Welby recalls a sobering sight as he handcuffed Morei:

“When he was on the ground as (sic) placing the handcuffs on him I could see there was blood on his hands and it was obviously not his own because he had no wounds.”

Both feel the presence of five Gardaí helped distract Morei as he was scanning around, trying to keep an eye on all the assembled Gardai who were in a loose V formation, and didn’t get a chance to put up any resistance when charged.

Both also recall a tense atmosphere at the time.

Garda Lynch says:

“Well you don’t know how it’s going, you’re standing there in front of drawn firearms so all it takes is a wee bit of excitement on someone’s part,

“Like it was intense enough at the time, but it ended as quickly as it had started.

“Naturally, there’s that fear the minute the guns come out beside you.

“There was also trepidation [in that] you had concern for him (Morei) because he was only heading one way, he was not engaging with us positively at all, it was definitely a standoff with whoever was gonna blink first and unfortunately for him he had three guns pointed at him.”

There was also a troubling thought niggling in the minds of both Gardai as events were unfolding, as he details:

“When you turn up initially, you’re thinking, he’s throwing posts at Damian in the car, and you’re wondering why he’s drawing attention to himself,” says Garda Lynch.

“A criminal looks to get away,” says Garda Welby.

“They don’t look to do something and get lifted for it, in general you might have the odd [exception] but most of the time especially something to the nature of what had happened… somebody would be looking to get away.”

Garda Lynch continues: “Part of what is going through your head is why is he drawing a crowd to himself.

“There’s five of us standing in front of him. I have kids, Damien has kids, Dave Devaney has kids, he’s drawing five of you in for a reason so we have to get him stopped.

“If he had a vest or something on him, there’s five of us gone. So one rather than five is always the better option. That was my initial concern. Whatever he’s planning has to be stopped.

“As it turns out the poor man was unwell.”

In all, the whole encounter happened in a matter of three or four minutes, but both agree it felt like an eternity at the time.

“If someone is going to run they don’t wait, they’ll just go for it and that didn’t seem like it was going to [happen]. What was going to happen was he was going to go for us as opposed to trying to get away,” says Garda Welby.

Looking back on the event five years on, both reflect how, to a degree, their training kicked in allowing the incident to be dealt with swiftly, while acknowledging that nothing can fully prepare you for real-life scenarios.

Garda Welby says:

“There is a lot of autopilot in our job, you deal with people according to the way you were trained but an awful lot of time, be it a traffic accident or whatever, you go into ‘ hold on I know what I have to do here’ and I suppose in this situation it’s only when you look at things afterwards, you look at this that and the other and you maybe over analyse things.

“But at the time, you just try to deal with things as swiftly and as safely as possible.”

Garda Lynch added that when training kicks in, you subconsciously know what to do, saying:

“I do the public order training and I use it as an example of when you have units sent out. It’s an example that I mention because you will come across this.

“It isn’t something you just see on the news, you will find them, and we have seen examples of it before with tragic consequences.

“It is something that a Garda will possibly face.

“You’d never leave the house if you thought of all the dangers ahead of you… it boils down to the fact that regardless of what is out there, somebody has to try.”

Garda Welby is quick to realise that luck also played a part in the events that day:

“There is an element of luck within our job in that you [can be in] the right place at the right time, if I hadn’t been going to court on that day; When would he have got caught? Would he have gone to ground? Would he have met anybody at all? So there’s that side of it.”

Mohamad Morei was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity at the Central Criminal Court.

He was also found not guilty by reason of insanity of assaulting two men causing them harm on the same day at Quay Street and Inner Relief Road in Dundalk.

The same verdict was returned for a charge of criminal damage to a car and of robbery by trespassing and committing criminal damage between January 2 and 3, 2018.

During the trial, two consultant psychiatrists gave evidence that Mr Morei was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia at the time and did not know that what he was doing was wrong and was unable to refrain from his actions.

He remains in detention under S.5 (2) of the Criminal Law Insanity Act at the Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum.