Gran Canaria airport shooting: Moment teen knifeman shot dead by police

An 18-year-old man was filmed in where he threatened tourists with a knife before being shot dead by police.

Holidaymakers watched on in horror as the man from Gambia was shot five times by at last Saturday afternoon. Onlookers described the man as appearing out of his mind as he tried to rob a taxi driver and then lunged at a police officer before they fired at him.

Footage shows tourists at the airport running for cover as shots rang out. Other clips show the knifeman running at one of the five National Police officers trying to intercept him who fell to the ground and then afterwards people looked on in horror at what had happened after the man had been shot. One woman could be heard shouting: "My God you've killed him" while officers tried to keep a crowd back.

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He was shot as he tried to attack officers who appeared to be warning him to stop. Court officials have confirmed one of the five bullets the teenager received hit him in the neck. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

CCTV footage of the incident, which unfolded just before 5pm on Saturday, is being analysed by an investigating judge based in the Gran Canaria town of Telde. Overnight it emerged the unnamed aggressor had tried to board a flight to Gambia before going on the rampage, but was turned back after airport workers saw his ticket was for a plane due to take off on May 22.

He is said to have tried to force his way through airport control after being intercepted, setting off a scanner because of the knife he was carrying in his rucksack. Ibon Dominguez, a spokesman for police union Jupol, has described the response of the officers who tackled the knifeman as “proportional and congruent.”

He said: “The man with the knife could easily have ended the lives of one of those policemen.” The Canary Islands High Court of Justice said in its first full statement on the incident: “A duty court in Telde has been investigating the circumstances in which a person who was shot by the police died on Saturday in the airport area.

“At the moment the court is compiling the images of the multiple camera recordings from outside and inside the airport in order to establish a reconstruction of the events.

“The man was shot five times, including once in the neck. The videos show that the deceased was apparently out of his mind and carrying a large knife and after attacking a taxi driver he felled a police officer and tried to knock down another, and was wandering around armed in an area with a large number of people, creating a real danger for their physical integrity. He was 18 years old.”