Security guard and eyewitness tells how Reading terror suspect attacked him a year earlier

A stunned eyewitness to the Reading terror attack was assaulted by suspect Khairi Saadallah in a bottle attack a year earlier.

Sainsbury’s security guard Sydney McDonald, 65, was the victim in the court case that put Saadallah behind bars until just 16 days ago.

Mr McDonald was on the scene in Forbury Gardens on Saturday when he saw the terror attack – which killed three people – and the suspect looking like he had put his hands “in a big bucket of red paint”.

Incredibly he went on to reveal he had been assaulted by the suspect last year when he stopped him from shoplifting from his store in Reading town centre. 

He said: “I am sure he is the same bloke, he’s grown a beard but he’s the same height, same build, same age, same everything.”

Saadallah had been sentenced to 28 months for breaching a suspended jail term, racially aggravated assault, criminal damage and affray.

But he was released from HMP Bullingdon, Oxfordshire, just over a fortnight ago after serving less than half of his sentence.

This was despite him having offences stretching back to November 2018.

His previous included racially aggravated common assault – after he called a police officer a “slave” and spat in her face – carrying a bladed article and assaulting an emergency worker.

A month earlier in September 2019 he was also jailed for 10 weeks after he admitted spitting at District Judge Sophie Toms as she sentenced him at Reading Magistrates’ Court in March for two previous convictions. 

He had his overall sentence reduced to 17 months and 20 days’ imprisonment through the Court of Appeal in March this year.

One of the appeal judges who gave the judgment, Mr Justice Goss, noted Saadallah’s various mental health issues in reducing the sentence. 

Mr McDonald said he recognised the man from when he had attacked him in January 2019 by rushing at him with a broken wine bottle and whipping him with a belt.

Describing the previous incident, Mr McDonald said: ‘When he attacked me outside the shop he broke a bottle and threatened to stab me and I defended myself. I put him to the floor, held him there … and he couldn’t get away from me and I held him until the police came.’

He added: ‘If I couldn’t have defended myself he probably would have killed me. But I knew how to handle it.

‘He pulled the bottle of alcohol out that he had nicked from Sainsbury’s then he smashed the bottle and came at me. He punched me in my face and I hit him back, his nose was bleeding. I kept him down on the floor until the police came. 

‘I thought he had a knife because of the way he was behaving.’

The Reading Chronicle said the trial saw CCTV footage of Saadallah, wearing a cap and a backpack, taking a bottle of wine from his jacket.

He emptied it in front of Mr McDonald before smashing it on the ground in front of him, Reading Crown Court heard.

The security guard had told the jury minutes before he had been ‘flat as a pancake’ when he came in and tried to leave the store after acting suspiciously in the alcohol aisle and a bottle shaped bugle having appeared in his jacket.

 Police rushed to the scene in Forbury Gardens in Reading at 7pm on Saturday after getting a number of people had been stabbed.

Thames Valley Police said a suspect was apprehended and arrested within five minutes and is still being held by detectives.

Saadallah was initially arrested on suspicion of murder but was later re-arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000. 

Three people were killed in the attack and a further three taken to hospital for treatment.

This morning a one-minute silence was held to remember those who lost their lives.