LONDON (AP) — A 5-year-old girl is receiving emergency medical treatment in a Dublin hospital following an attack on Thursday that involved a knife. A woman and two other children were injured.
Irish police said they weren’t treating the case as terror-related, and that a man in his 50s, who was also hospitalized with serious injuries, is a “person of interest.”
Police said they have a “definite line of inquiry” and that they weren’t looking for anyone else in connection with the violence outside a school in the heart of Dublin soon after 1:30 p.m.
Superintendent Liam Geraghty said at a media briefing that preliminary indications are that a man attacked a number of people on Parnell Square East.
He said that police believe that it was “a standalone incident, not necessarily connected to any wider issues that are ongoing in the country or in the city, and we need to identify the exact reasons for that happening.”
He confirmed earlier witness reports that a knife was used in the attack, but he couldn’t provide more details on the nature of the injuries. He also confirmed that witnesses sought to disarm the man as soon as they saw what was going on.
“My understanding is members of the public did intervene at a very, very early stage and we would applaud those members of the public for getting involved in such a traumatic and potentially dangerous situation for themselves,” Geraghty said.
He said that the woman, who is in her 30s, suffered serious injuries, while the two other children, a 5-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl, sustained less serious injuries. The boy has been discharged from a hospital, he added.
Irish Justice Minister Helen McEntee said that she was “deeply shocked” by the “appalling attack on three innocent children and a woman.”
