EXCLUSIVE | 

Angel of Parnell Square: Hero school-worker put life on line to save kids during stabbing

Tributes for care worker who put her life on the line to save children from knife-wielding attacker

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A family member of the childcare worker who placed herself between a crazed knifeman and the children he was intent on killing on Parnell Square has called on the public to pray for her.

Hero school-worker Leanne Flynn Keogh, who received multiple stab wounds in the attack, continued to battle for her life yesterday on a ventilator at a Dublin hospital following multiple surgeries.

Her cousin Tracey called for “prayers for my cousin Leanne who was one of the victims of the attack at the school”.

Fresh details of Leanne’s selfless heroics in placing her body in front of the knife wielded by an Algerian-born Irish citizen continued to emerge yesterday.

Garret FitzGerald, whose six year old son was among the group Leanne protected, said: “My son’s care worker stepped in front of a knife for him and the other kids.

“She wrestled the guy long enough to allow the other kids to run and for help to arrive. Words fail me. She’s an absolute hero.

“She was one of many heroes – including passers-by who intervened, first responders and the children themselves.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with those still in hospital and anyone who has been affected by this awful tragedy.”

One of the children stabbed by the assailant, a five-year-old girl, remains in Temple Street Hospital in a critical condition.

A six-year-old girl, also injured in the horrific incident, was released from hospital on Saturday, while a five-year-old boy was previously discharged after treatment.

The wife of another man who heroically wrestled with the attacker after Leanne was stabbed said there was no doubt but she had saved the lives of the children.

“She is an absolute hero,” Stacey Power Donohoe, whose husband Warren was first to go to Leanne and the children’s aid, told the Sunday World.

“If she hadn’t wrestled him for as long as she did a lot more children would have died, because he was targeting the children. You could see all he wanted to do was to get through her to get to them.”

Stacey, who was up in Dublin with husband Warren and daughter Abigail, said they were walking past the school at 1.30pm on Thursday when the attack took place.

The family, who live in Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, had come to the capital to visit Stacey’s mum and to celebrate Abigail’s 11th birthday.

“We got as far as the Gate Theatre when I saw a man and woman arguing. I said to the kids ‘come over here beside me’ – because they wouldn’t be used to seeing anything like that.

“And it was then that I must have realised what was really going on. Because my mam said I just screamed – ‘Warren, he’s stabbing the child, he’s stabbing the child’.

“And then Warren ran over and dived on the fella.

“This was at the time the Brazilian fella (Caio Benicio) had go off his bike and was throwing his helmet at him.

“The girl, Leanne, had kicked the knife away from him and the Brazilian lad picked it up and took it across the road and threw it in the bushes.

“As he did that, Warren stayed on top of the attacker – he had him pinned to the floor, but all the while I could see the poor child in the puddle of blood.”

At this stage, a horror-struck Stacey said she realised her own daughter Abigail – who has autism – had left her side and had gone missing.

“I started screaming again then because I thought something must have happened to her. I thought maybe someone had grabbed or attacked her too, so I started screaming for people to help find my child.”

Stacey said as this was happening, Warren was “still holding the fella”.

“Then two women came out and they seemed to be trying to tell Warren to stop but Warren screamed back: ‘That child is lying in a puddle of blood – he’s trying to kill the children’.

“Warren was still afraid of him getting back.

“He’d rang the Guards and I could hear him yelling at them: ‘Where the f**k are ye?’”

As the nightmarish sequence unfolded, passers-by went to Stacey’s aid in trying to locate Abigail – who was wearing blue ear defenders and a Minecraft jumper when she had gone missing.

Stacey said Warren, alerted by her screams, then left the scene of the attack at Gaelscoil Cholaiste Mhuire, which was now under control, to search for his daughter.

Video from the day shows the brave dad running down Parnell Square in a bid to locate her.

Thankfully, a security guard from the Rotunda Hospital, after hearing Abigail’s description, told the family she had come in there trying to alert doctors and nurses as to what was occurring outside.

“He said: ‘We have her, she’s safe, we have her’.

“Then a midwife told me Abigail had run into the hospital screaming: ‘The kids are getting stabbed, we need all the nurses and doctors, the man is stabbing all the kids, we have to help them’.”

After they were reunited with Abigail, Stacey said the family left for her brother’s house.

“Warren got a call from the Guards last night (Thursday) because they must have traced him from the 999 call. They want him to give a statement,” she said.

“One Guard told him: ‘If you hadn’t run over across that road, he would have stabbed all the kids. They’re so lucky you were there.’

“All I can say is there were a lot of heroes who stopped something even worse happening at that school … There’s Warren, there’s the Brazilian lad, but most of all I think there was that girl, Leanne.

“She was the after-school worker and I know that girl personally.

“If she hadn’t stood in front of them kids, he (the attacker) would have gotten to a lot more. She stood and tried to push him away.​

“It’s her and the poor child who was stabbed that we should all be thinking about today.”