Cork Airport incident ‘bizarre and terrifying’

TAXI DRIVER Peter Barry was sitting first in line on the St Patrick’s Street taxi rank, opposite Penney’s, when he realised something was going on.

“I was on the phone when I suddenly saw a lot of commotion had broken out. I thought it was some kind of road rage incident but then I saw it was a guy with a knapsack on his back hassling a garda,” said Peter.

“The garda was in a queue of traffic and the other guy was harassing him and giving him digs.”

The garda jumped out of the car and then the crowd saw that the man had a knife and what looked like several screwdrivers.

The garda was backing away and Peter could see blood on his face.

“There was real fire in that guy’s eyes. People had gone over to help but then when people saw what was a big knife, they all started to run away,” Peter said.

The man then jumped into the jeep and drove erratically down St Patrick’s Street where he crashed into a BMW before driving down pedestrianised Maylor Street. He crashed through a barricade on his way to the airport and rammed a female driver, who last night was recovering from her injuries.

Once he got onto the airport, the man then took control of a fire engine jeep and stripped to his boxer shorts.

He wrote off two garda cars as he drove at speed and in circles around the airport apron, before he was eventually halted with a stun gun after the jeep stalled.

Last night, Cork airport marketing manager Kevin Cullinane said the airport’s passengers, staff and police had been badly shaken by the incident.

“It was a terrifying ordeal, a bizarre and terrifying ordeal. It could have been much more serious though. We are very lucky that there weren’t more serious injuries,” he said.

Mr Cullinane said five vehicles were badly damaged: Two airport police vehicles, two Garda cars and one luggage truck.

Eyewitness John Peavoy was waiting for a flight to Amsterdam at the time of the incident. He told Newstalk it was a miracle nobody was hurt.

Posting on Twitter Mr Peavoy said there was a “surreal atmosphere” in the airport.

There was no disruption to the airport timetable but one flight to Lourdes was delayed as gardaí were still at the scene.