1/ In January 2008, PC Neil Sampson walked towards a man with a knife. He took seven stab wounds doing it.
His dog Anya, already bleeding, kept hold of the attacker so her handler could live.
That same man, Essa Suleiman stabbed two people yesterday in a terror attack in Golders Green.
Here’s what happened next. 🧵
2/ In January 2008, PC Neil Sampson walked towards a man with a knife. He took seven stab wounds doing it – four to the back of the head, one through the lip, two in the leg. His dog Anya, already bleeding herself, kept hold of the attacker so her handler could live.
3/ The man was Essa Suleiman. He also stabbed PC Michael Mansell. Anya took a stab wound to the chest. She survived. She got the PDSA Gold Medal in 2010 for saving PC Sampson’s life. 😭
4/ Swindon Crown Court. Nine years for GBH. The judge ruled half had to be served in custody. Half. Four and a half years for trying to kill two British police officers and their dog.
5/ He served his time. Came out. Kept his British citizenship. In 2020 he was referred to Prevent. Case closed the same year. No deportation. No removal of citizenship. No precaution. Back into the community.
6/ 29/04/2026. He has a knife altercation in Southwark at 08:50. Police are called. He’s gone before they arrive. Nobody finds him. By 11:16 he’s eight miles north stabbing a 76-year-old man putting on his kippah at a bus stop, and a 34-year-old leaving his synagogue.
7/ It was declared a terrorist incident by Counter Terrorism Policing London within hours. He was hunting Jews. He chose Golders Green. He waited at a bus stop until a 76-year-old put his kippah on, and then he stabbed him. Say it plainly: this was an antisemitic terror attack on British Jews on British streets.
8/ It did not come from nowhere. For nearly two years this country has tolerated open antisemitism on its streets every weekend in the name of “pro-Palestine” marches. Police have stood by while crowds chanted for the destruction of a Jewish state. Officers arresting Jews for holding signs in counter-protest. The state set the temperature. This is what the temperature looks like.
9/ The Jewish community has been telling us for months. Hatzola ambulances set on fire in Golders Green. The Kenton United Synagogue attacked. A Jewish charity targeted. Finchley Reform Synagogue last week. The Hatzola memorial outside the synagogue – 300 yards from where Moshe Ben Baila was stabbed yesterday. They have been screaming that this was coming. They were ignored.
10/ The Chief Rabbi said yesterday that “words of condemnation are no longer sufficient.” He is right. British Jews are now changing how they dress, where they walk, whether they wear a kippah in public, in 2026, in London. That is a national disgrace. It is not a debate. It is a fact.
11/ Two Jewish men in hospital. Officers who arrested him thought he was wearing a bomb. They walked towards him anyway. Every one of them would have known what happened to PC Sampson in 2008.
12/ And the footage shows officers kicking towards his head as they took him down. Mark my words – the IOPC hindsight squad will be all over those officers within the week. They’ll say he was on the floor. He’d been tasered. There was “no need.”
13/ The IOPC weren’t there. They weren’t the ones walking towards a man with a knife who had already stabbed two people that morning. They weren’t the ones with adrenaline tearing through them, looking at a backpack they thought was a bomb, looking at a man who they had every reason to believe was about to detonate it and kill them all.
14/ It is very easy to sit in an office reviewing body-worn footage and decide what was proportionate. It is something else entirely to be the person whose next decision is the difference between going home or not. Those officers stopped a terrorist before he could kill anyone. They will be punished for it.
15/ He told us who he was eighteen years ago. In blood. Seven stab wounds’ worth. The system let him out at the halfway point, let him keep his passport, closed his Prevent file, and let him walk the streets of London with a knife.
16/ Why should any officer put their life on the line when the state’s answer to what their life is worth is four and a half years and a closed file – and the reward for stopping the next attack is an IOPC investigation?
17/ Change the law. Full sentences served for attacks on police. Removal of citizenship for those who try to take British lives. Deportation where the law allows it, and a change in the law where it doesn’t. And get the IOPC’s nose out of split-second decisions made by officers facing armed terrorists.
18/ Stop pretending this is complicated. It is a choice the state keeps making. And officers, and now a 76-year-old man at a bus stop, keep paying for it.
19/ PC Sampson was lucky. Anya saved him. Yesterday it was a Jewish pensioner. Tomorrow it will be someone else. Until this country values its police, and its people, more than it values the comfort of pretending none of this is happening.
20/ PC Neil Sampson is still alive because of his dog. Moshe Ben Baila, 76, is alive because he flinched. Shloime Rand, 34, is alive because the blade missed. We are now relying on luck. That is the security policy of the United Kingdom in 2026.
21/ If you’re a serving officer, ex-job, or just a Briton who’s had enough: share this. Tag your MP. Tag the Home Secretary. Tag the Met Commissioner. Make them read what they have done. Make them read it in public. Because nothing changes until the cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of acting. 🧵
@KemiBadenoch @RupertLowe @metpoliceuk @SuellaBraverman @Nigel_Farage @policeconduct
#goldersgreen #standwithbritishjews
@JuliaHB1 @EssexPR @ForeverScept
@piersmorgan @jk_rowling
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.