Army chaplain hugged boy who tried to kill him with a hunting knife

There are many ways to react to attempted murder – hugging your would-be killer isn’t usually one of them.

But army chaplain Fr Paul Murphy is ‘in the business of forgiving’, he told the teenage boy, 17, who stabbed him seven times with a hunting knife.

Speaking at the boy’s sentencing hearing today, Murphy said: ‘I offer to you, the young man standing accused before me, the forgiveness that will hopefully help you to become a better person.’

The boy, who was 16 at the time, approached Murphy’s car as he drove onto the Irish Army’s Renmore Barracks in Galway on August 15 last year.

‘Excuse me sir’, the schoolboy told the chaplain around 10.35pm. ‘Do you have a minute to talk to me?’

He then lunged when Murphy rolled down the window and stabbed the man seven times with an eight-inch serrate blade he had bought online months earlier.

Murphy drove through the barrack gates, dragging along his attacker before the boy was restrained by soldiers who had previously fired warning shots.

‘There was blood everywhere’, the court heard.

Fr Murphy called it a ‘blessing’ when he read a victim impact statement in court on Thursday.

‘If it wasn’t me it would have been someone else’, he said. ‘And I am convinced, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was the right person, in the right place, at the right time – that night was filled with blessings.’

He added: ‘I thank God every single day that the knife tore through my skin, and not through the body of one of my comrades.

‘I consider it an honour and a privilege to carry those scars until my dying day.’

The boy, who cannot be named due to his age, pleading guilty to attempted murder on February 10.

He was found with content supporting the Islamic State, including an ISIS flag and material related to Mohammed Emwazi, the British executioner dubbed ‘Jihadi John’, and sketches of beheadings in a notebook.

The boy said: ‘I did it in protest of the Irish Defence Forces and their work in Mali and all the stuff for Islam.’

He had converted to Islam when he was 15, around the time his parents separated and ‘trouble began to bubble up’ in his mental situation, defence barrister Sean Gillane said.

Becoming isolate and engaged with others online, the boy – who has autism – was vulnerable to ‘increasing radicalisation and a poisoning of his belief system’, the defence claimed.

Addressing the boy, Fr Murphy said: ‘My hope and prayer is that you will use whatever resources are put at your disposal, in prison or beyond, to learn a better way of living and that you will use your energy and your talents to make our world a better place for all people to live.

‘Life is for living and for loving, and, I promise you, your life will find its ultimate joy when you live honourably and love generously.’

But ‘the face remains that he has committed an appalling crime’ and ‘we all have to take responsibility for our actions’, the chaplain said.

He continued: ‘He has offended our State, he has offended the Irish Defence Forces and he has offended every soldier who has walked through the gate of our barracks, because it could have been any one of them who was stabbed.

‘Every crime warrants an appropriate punishment and every sentence should serve as a deterrent to others from perpetrating similar crimes.

‘It falls to you to give sentence in this case and, assuming that it will be custodial, length of years is not what interests me.

‘My only desire is that the young man before you would learn to see the error of his ways and, when the time comes, return to society to make a positive contribution to the world as a wholesome, happy and loving person.’

At the end of the hearing, Fr Murphy shook hands, exchanged words and then hugged the boy, who had told him ‘I’m sorry’ during proceedings.

Judge Paul McDermott will deliver the boy’s sentence on April 29. Until then the teenager will remain in Oberstown child detention centre, where a psychological assessment and probation report will take place.

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