How a laborer calmly walked into a Sheffield pub and shot three men dead in cold blood
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At first, no explanation could be had for the murders - which left two other men in hospital - but it would later transpire that native Somalian Mohamed Ishmail had wanted to die and thought that by carrying out the murders he would be hanged by the British authorities.
Oddly, Ishmail didn’t get his wish and was deported back to Somalia a short time after his conviction where, according to Sheffield historian Douglas Lamb, he ran amok when he arrived home and was gunned down.
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Hide AdDescribing the murders at the East House pub, in Spital Hill, the following day, the Sheffield Telegraph reported: “Three men were killed and two were injured when a man produced a revolver and started shooting in a crowded smoke-room of a Sheffield public house last night.
One man died immediately. Two died at Sheffield Royal Infirmary. Sheffield police announced early this morning that a man had been taken into custody in connection with the deaths.
The time was 10.45p.m. in the East House, Spital Hill - Sheffield's public houses had an extension for New Years Day.
People in the bar were singing carols around the piano when suddenly a man who refused to join in pulled out a revolver. Seconds later Michael MacFarlane, of Perkyn Road, Sheffield, was lying dead, and George Fred Morris of Writtle Road and Thomas Owen, a soldier on leave, were gravely injured. They died in hospital.
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Hide AdSeriously injured and taken to the Royal Infirmary was Donald MacFarlane, brother of one of the dead men, also of Perkyn Road, Kenneth Ellis, of Forncett Street, Sheffield, had a wrist injury. Donald MacFarlane is undergoing a major brain operation at the hospital to save his life.
Fifty-six year old Thomas Gulfoyle who lives just opposite the pub told a Sheffield Telegraph reporter shortly after the incident "I was watching the television and heard four or five bangs. There was a rumpus across the road at the pub. Then I heard the police arrive”.”
Ishmail later appeared before Sheffield Magistrates’ Court and was remanded, charged with three counts of capital murder.
But before he could be tried, a prison medic recognised that he was insane - believing that evil voices spoke to him through the prison’s electricity network, and smashing lightbulbs to stop the voices reaching him.
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Hide AdAccording to a report in the Sheffield Star in 1984, Ishmail was released from Broadmoor mental hospital just 22-months after the killings and, after a killing spree which led to the deaths of several villages, was finally shot and killed.
In the article, written by Ian Macgill also spoke to Donald MacFarlane would spend three years in hospital recovering from his injuries and would never walk again. He never received any compensation from the shooting as it happened before the introduction of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund.