Hotel stab threat 'not serious enough' for police report, inquiry hears

An inquiry has heard police were not warned an asylum seeker threatened to stab people because the situation was not judged to be serious enough to merit the call.

The next day, Badreddin Abdullah Adam Bosh attacked six people at the Park Inn Hotel in Glasgow and was shot dead by firearms officers.

One former hotel resident told the fatal accident inquiry (FAI) into the incident in June 2020 that Bosh was in a "bad psychological state" prior to the attack.

The hearing at Glasgow Sheriff Court will determine whether lessons could be learned.

Bosh claimed asylum in the UK in 2019, telling the Home Office he had been beaten by the authorities in his native Sudan after taking part in protests.

He arrived in Glasgow in February 2020 and in March told a case worker he was having problems in the city and that people were shouting at him in the street because he was gay.

In April, after the start of the Covid pandemic, he was moved to the Park Inn Hotel along with other asylum seekers.

He spent weeks self-isolating in his room, apparently suffering from Covid.

By the end of April concerns over his psychological state were raised by a welfare officer.

Bosh told another asylum seeker that people in the hotel were against him and were making noise which kept him awake.

By June, his lawyer felt he was struggling emotionally and psychologically because of his accommodation in the hotel.

Later that month, he was spoken to by a worker from Mears, the company which the Home Office appointed to look after the welfare of asylum seekers.

The Mears worker recorded that everything was okay and there were no problems.

On 25 June, the day before the attack, two men staying in the hotel told a member of staff that Bosh was threatening to stab people.

In a statement to police after the attack, Yousif Mohammed, 38, said Bosh had told him he had been unable to sleep for three-and-a-half to four months.

He had told Mohammed people in the rooms "left, right and above him were constantly making noise" and disturbing him, adding he "couldn't take it any more."

Giving evidence at the inquiry through an interpreter, Mohammed said Bosh was in "a very bad psychological state" and said if the noise did not stop he was going to stab people.

Along with another resident, Seraj Ba Lubaid, he decided to tell the hotel what was happening.

He said: "I didn't think they would contact the police. I just thought they would take him to a mental health institute because he needed mental help."

Lubaid told the inquiry he had heard Bosh threaten to stab people but did not take it too seriously.

After he talked to friends, he decided to report it.

The hotel worker, night porter Liam McCullough, said the two men had been laughing when they approached him at 22:45 that night.

He had difficulty understanding what they were saying because they were using "very broken English," but when the word "stab" was mentioned, he told them he was going to take it very seriously.

The 38-year-old thought about contacting the police but decided the best course of action was to escalate it to his superiors.

The hotel manager gave him an out of hours number for a Mears helpline, which he called.

A Mears worker told him 45 minutes later that they had called Bosh's room, but the man who answered claimed not to understand their translator.

By then it was late at night and it was decided it would be picked up by Mears staff at the hotel the next morning.

McCullough said at the time they were content to leave it at that as the hotel was quiet and, as far as he could tell, there was no immediate danger.

He said residents had threatened each other before, including people whose countries had been at war, but the police had not been called.

"There was an agreement all round that it wasn't serious enough yet to merit contacting the police," he told the inquiry.

The next morning, Bosh's solicitor learned about the threats, spoke to him by phone, and contacted the Home Office's safeguarding asylum team.

At 12:16, the safeguarding team emailed Mears' welfare team in Scotland and asked them to check Bosh and help him obtain mental health support.

The attacks began 28 minutes later. Bosh went on to inflict multiple stab wounds on five of the six people, including one of the first police officers at the scene.

He was shot six times on the hotel's first floor landing by two firearms officers at 13:46 and pronounced dead.

The inquiry, which is expected to last about two months, continues before Sheriff Stuart Reid.