He has been called a “hero” for helping to subdue a knife-wielding assailant suspected of attacking children outside a school in Dublin on Thursday. But the Brazilian deliveryman assured AFP on Saturday that he had acted “as any parent would have done”. Caio Benicio, who works for the takeaway food delivery app Deliveroo, used his motorcycle helmet to hit the suspect “with all his might”, who was attacking a little girl. The attacker was arrested on the spot.
The intervention of Caio Benicio and other passers-by was warmly welcomed by Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who called them “true Irish heroes”. The 43-year-old Brazilian, father of a 12-year-old boy and a 19-year-old girl, told AFP that he did not really consider himself a “hero”. “I have two children, and I think every parent would have done the same,” he said. Caio Benicio, however, was moved to have been congratulated for his courage by many Irish people, as well as by his children: “It’s nice to make them proud”.
A call from Macron
A 17-year-old French boy, an apprentice cook on training in Dublin, also helped to disarm the attacker. Slightly injured in the hand and face, he received a call from French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday to congratulate him on his bravery.
According to Caio Benicio, the riots that occurred after the stabbing attack, which brought together nearly 500 people and demonstrate the rise of anti-immigration sentiment in Ireland, make “no sense”. “They were targeting immigrants, I am an immigrant myself and I am the one who helped,” he commented. I think it’s a small group of people who don’t even know what they’re doing, who they’re fighting for. »