A retired police dog handler has told of the moment he was knifed seven times by the suspected Golders Green suspect.

Neil Sampson, 65, from Swindon, Wiltshire, was targeted by Essa Suleiman, 45, in January 2008 while attending another stabbing by the Somali-born British national.

Suleiman, 45, has now been named as the man suspected of stabbing two Jewish people in the attacks in north London on Wednesday, after which he was arrested and taken into custody.

His victims, Shloime Rand, 34, and Moshe Ben Baila, 76, named locally as Moshe Shine, remain in hospital in a stable condition.

Mr Sampson has now told the Daily Mail of his previous horrifying ordeal at the hands of the attacker, who police have said has a history of ‘serious violence and mental health issues’.

He had been responding, alongside his German Shepherd Anya, to reports of a knife attack by Suleiman on his fellow tenant, Ahmed Huriye, in the Liden area of Swindon, Wiltshire.

But the handler himself was soon repeatedly stabbed by the attacker, suffering a terrifying seven knife wounds variously to the back of his head, face and leg.

Neil Sampson, 65, from Swindon, Wiltshire, was targeted by Essa Suleiman, 45, in January 2008 while attending another stabbing by the Somali-born British national

Mr Sampson has now told the Daily Mail of his previous horrifying ordeal at the hands of the attacker, who police have said has a history of ‘serious violence and mental health issues’

Anya, along with another police officer, who can not be named due to the sensitive nature of his job, were also stabbed.

Mr Sampson, who retired from policing six years after the attack and now works for a car dealership, told this newspaper: ‘That wasn’t my best day at work but I was still living and breathing. 

‘I was stabbed seven times by him and many people get stabbed once and that’s all that they ever have and they’re dead.

‘So to be stabbed seven times and be alive is great.’

The grandfather-of-five said there were already two officers at the scene when he arrived with Anya – and soon after, a man exited the block of flats where the attack took place.

Mr Sampson said he fit the description he had been given of the suspect – but had begun to turn and walk away from where the officer was standing.

‘I shouted to him, ‘Can I have a word with you and can you tell me where you’ve been?’,’ the ex-constable explained. ‘And he didn’t answer me.

‘He just spun and started coming back towards me. And as he’s getting closer to me, I then noticed that on his jogging bottoms there was some blood.

‘So I thought, ‘Well, yeah, fair bet you’re the man.’ He’s coming towards me and I looked to my right where my colleagues were and by this time, there were four other officers at the scene.

‘They were around 50 yards or more away. And I turned back looking at him and he’s now got a knife out and he’s sweeping that backwards and forwards across his body.’

The officer began shouting that he was a police dog handler and would release the animal on him if he did not put the weapon down – but Suleiman continued to brandish the knife.

‘I backed away, backed away, backed away, until I really couldn’t give him any more time or any more space – I had to send the dog. And after that moment, it was just mad,’ Mr Sampson said.

Suleiman, 45, has now been named as the man suspected of stabbing two Jewish people in the attacks in north London on Wednesday

The officer began shouting that he was a police dog handler and would release the animal on him if he did not put the weapon down – but Suleiman continued to brandish the knife

‘I saw my dog hit him and bounce off him and disappear, which surprised me. I can’t really remember everything that went on.

‘I saw him attacking one of my colleagues. I tried to kick him, missed, and he came back at me.

‘And then, my last memory of the incident was I could feel what I thought was someone punching me on the back of my head and I was actually face down on the ground and he was stabbing me in the back of the head.’

In a particularly chilling twist, the officer explained: ‘He never said a word. Bearing in mind, he’s got a dog on him, and if you’ve ever been bitten by a dog, that is an incredibly painful thing.

‘It’s a German Shepherd, full mouth bite, and that hurts, I promise you. Even with a sleeve on, that hurts. If you have that on bare flesh, I’ve heard people scream and it’s unearthly the noise that people make when they’re getting bitten by a dog like that.

‘Not a sound. He was batoned, sprayed, tasered.’

It was only when a Taser was discharged directly to Suleiman’s groin, in a desperate attempt to disarm him, that he finally spoke, Mr Sampson said.

‘At that point in this incident, he said, ‘Ouch’. And that’s it. The only thing he said,’ he explained. ‘And at that point and at no other point did he drop the knife.’

Bodycam footage of the attacks in north London this week have shown Metropolitan Police officers also detaining Suleiman by Tasering – before which he was resistant to arrest.

‘Two of the officers that were fighting with him while I was lying on the ground were ex-military and said they have never, ever fought with anyone who fought like him,’ Mr Sampson said.

‘So he’s a formidable character and the only thing about him now is he’s older and because Anya got his calf, he can’t run properly.’

Suleiman admitted the attacks in July 2008 before he was then detained under an interim hospital order and sent to a secure hospital for psychiatric testing.

He appeared at Swindon Crown Court in December of that year where a judge ruled he would be sent to jail rather than hospital, having read reports by doctors who treated him.

The court heard that while in custody, Suleiman had managed to stay off drugs and was therefore considered to be of sound enough mind for prison.

Judge Douglas Field said: ‘I made an interim hospital order then made another hospital order. The doctor’s report came in in the last few days.

‘The latest report shows that the defendant, separated from his drug of choice whilst in prison and hospital, is now in his right mind.

‘Because of that, I can’t see how I could extend the hospital order, and the defendant will have to be transferred back into ordinary custody.’

The judge said at the time he was concerned about a series of delays to the case and wanted to bring it to a conclusion as soon as possible.

Suleiman was eventually handed an indefinite sentence – but was released on licence several years ago.

Mr Sampson said: ‘I get that indefinite sentences are a strange thing. They give the person no hope and if you’ve got no hope, why would you ever behave?

‘So, I’m not against people being given second chances or whatever, but when they said they were going to release him, my thoughts were, [prisoners] play a game.

‘They play the games. They know they have to say the right things and do the right things if they ever want to get released.’

When asked by victim support at the time for his opinion on the decision, the ex-officer said: ‘My only hope, and my only thought is, is that I hope his next victim is as lucky as I was.

‘Because, you know, really, I consider myself lucky. Most people say you get stabbed once. That’s not lucky. But no, I think I was lucky because I’m still alive, breathing here to talk to you.

‘Thankfully, the victims in Golders Green are also still alive. I’m sure they don’t think they’re lucky at the moment, but hopefully they will recover and feel better about themselves and about what’s gone on.’

He said he first started to suspect Suleiman might be the arrested man when reading the news on Thursday morning.

‘It was the fact that the alleged assailant attacked someone else in another building. I went straight to my wife and I said, ‘Look, I don’t know, but I would not be surprised if that was Essa Suleiman.

‘You might say, ‘Well, that sounds like b******t to me. Obviously what’s happened today, or the release of his name, has proven that to be right. And I take no satisfaction from being right. I absolutely take no satisfaction from being right.’

The Met have said officers have also carried out a search at an address in south-east London following the Golders Green attacks.

Detectives were investigating an incident there which was reported to police on Wednesday morning, just before the north London stabbings – and which is believed to have also been perpetrated by Suleiman.

Police were called at approximately 08:50am to an address in Great Dover Street, in the Borough area of Southwark, where a ‘suspect who is reported to have been armed with a knife, is believed to have had an altercation with the occupant before leaving’.

Mr Sampson continued: ‘Go to a court, you’ll see people queuing up to stand by and stand with the offenders, but the victims are quite often just left to sit amongst the family of the offender.

‘And this is just another symptom of that – that they just let these people do what they like, it almost seems without great consequence.’

He was out of work for five months after the incident before eventually making a full return.

He continued: ‘I know that people have to be given chances, but the problem is, he was an addict, I would suppose, of khat, which is the leaf that the Somali community chewed.

‘It was legal back then, but it’s not legal now. But these people live in circles. We all live in circles of friends and family and whatever.

‘When you release them, and bear in mind, he’s been under the care of the prison system so that he’s fed the right things, he’s given the right drugs, and in the main, they behave because it’s better for them to behave and say they play the game. They know what to say, know what to do.

‘But the moment you release them, there isn’t a budget there to monitor people. There isn’t a budget there to sort of really make sure that they’re looking after themselves in the right way.

‘And they’re going to go back. They’re going to go back to their old lifestyle.

‘If that’s the lifestyle that created the problem that allowed you or made you become what you were, you know, it’s in you, isn’t it? So it’s going to come back.

‘An addict is always an addict, and if you give them the opportunity, they will go back to that and that’s it.

‘So am I angry? I’m more upset really. I’m more upset because I thought [Suleiman committing another attack] would happen, and I take no pleasure in being proven right.

‘You’ve got to be firmer in applying the law. And you can’t just say, ‘Oh, well, you know, everyone’s got to be seen as nice’.

‘There’s got to be consequences for people who behave badly, and if they behave really badly, the consequences for them are irrelevant compared to the rights of the innocent individuals that they then hurt.

‘It comes back down to this thing that we seem to have got to this stage where people behave badly and it’s, ‘Oh no, no, that’s all right, they’re victims, just have to suck it, suck it up, and deal with it’.

‘And that’s what annoys and angers me, is that innocent people get hurt. But when it comes down to it, it’ll be Essa Suleiman who gets looked after.

‘It’ll be Essa Suleiman who will have people queuing up to help him, ‘Oh, he’s innocent, he didn’t deserve this, he didn’t deserve that’. But there you go.’

In an extraordinary show of empathy, he continued: ‘Did I wish him ill health or harm? No, not really, because that wouldn’t benefit me, by being nasty to someone else or thinking nastily about someone else…

‘I wouldn’t wish any harm on him. And if I never heard his name again, and he got on and had a good life, well, fair play to him. But he’s not that sort of person.’

In 2010, Anya was awarded the PDSA Gold Medal, the animal equivalent of the George Cross, for her bravery.

Suleiman, previously of Camberwell, south London, first came to the UK legally in the 1990s.

It has now been revealed he was referred to the government’s anti-extremism programme Prevent in 2020 – but the case was closed a year later.

He is understood to be a Somali translator who once worked as a school security guard.