logo
Moment thug attacks cops with Molotov cocktail & knife in police station rampage – as he shrugs off 50,000-volt Taser

Moment thug attacks cops with Molotov cocktail & knife in police station rampage – as he shrugs off 50,000-volt Taser

The Irish Sun13-06-2025
THIS is the moment a yob attacked cops with a Molotov cocktail, knife and a hatchet in a police station rampage over his "grudge" with authority.
Alexander Dighton, who had been referred to the anti-terrorism programme Prevent in January 2024, attacked three
police
officers at Talbot Green police station in Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales.
7
Alexander Dighton carried out a rampage at a police station
7
He managed to resist being Tasered before attacking police
7
Dighton has now been jailed for life
Credit: PA
The 28-year-old knifed one of the cops in the leg and knocked another unconscious after storming the station.
Footage released today shows Dighton first trying to hurl a firebomb at a police van but when it did not ignite, he started a blaze by pouring lighter fluid on the vehicle.
The thug was then captured smashing the windows on two
cars
using a pole before terrified officers: "I'm fed up, I'm done".
He managed to shake off the 50,000-volt Taser fired at him before continuing to smash the windows of the police station.
Dighton has now been locked up for life with a minimum of 22 years after pleading guilty to ten charges related to the January 31 attack.
The Old Bailey was told he had developed a "grudge" against authority and believed he was "damned from birth".
Prosecutor Nicholas Hearn said his sister had reported him to Prevent due to concerns he held "racist and anti-Muslim views" and was likely to be involved with incel groups.
During the attack on the police station, officers attempted to Taser him but it had no effect.
Most read in The Sun
He swung a pole at one officer and punched one in the head during the savage attack.
Dighton then knifed Det Con Jack Cotton in the leg - narrowly missing his femoral artery - as three cops attempted to restrain him.
When officers searched him, they found Dighton was wearing body armour and was carrying a hatchet in his bag.
He later told police he did not consider the scope of damage, "merely that blood had to be spilt".
The thug also admitted he was motivated by an anti-government ideology but denied intending to kill a police officer.
Dighton said: "Authority is not my problem. It's the use of authority which to me is the problem, the use of authority I have seen since I was 15, that's my problem."
He admitted the attempted murder of Detective Constable Jack Cotton, attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent to Sergeant Richard Coleman, assaulting Pc Joshua Emlyn and threatening Pc Stephanie Fleming with an adapted wooden pole.
Dighton also pleaded guilty to the attempted arson of a police van, two counts of damaging police property and having an adapted wooden pole, a knife and a hatchet.
Speaking after the case, Frank Ferguson of the Crown Prosecution Service said Dighton wanted to attack the Government and the state.
Read more on the Irish Sun
"We were able to show that Dighton's attack was not only pre-meditated and meticulously planned, but that his motivations were connected to terrorism.
"While it is not a criminal offence to hold extreme or offensive views, it is one to carry out attempted murder and attack police officers because of them."
7
Dighton first attempted to firebomb a police car
Credit: SWNS
7
He went to the station with a cache of weapons
Credit: SWNS
7
Dighton was sprayed with Pave but remained undeterred
7
He was wearing bullet proof armour
Credit: SWNS
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Clodagh Finn: The woman who took the last known photo of Michael Collins
Clodagh Finn: The woman who took the last known photo of Michael Collins

Irish Examiner

time7 hours ago

  • Irish Examiner

Clodagh Finn: The woman who took the last known photo of Michael Collins

When Agnes Hurley fixed the viewfinder of her Brownie box camera on Michael Collins as he left Bandon, Co Cork, on August 22, 1922, she had no idea that he would be dead a few hours later. The 18-year-old from nearby Mallowgaton already had a photographer's instinct and brought her camera with her everywhere. 'She carried it around with her like a person would a mobile phone today,' her niece Mim O'Donovan said. It was quite the coup to be positioned in front of Lee's Hotel (now the Munster Arms Hotel) with a clear view of Michael Collins as he left the West Cork town, sitting next to his aide Emmet Dalton in the back of a luxury Leyland touring car. The car is the focus of her atmospheric shot – complete with exhaust fumes – but you can also sense the ripple of excitement in the crush of people gathered along the pavement and one, looking down on proceedings from the vantage point of an upstairs window. Even without knowing what would later happen a few miles down the road, the young amateur photographer had succeeded in capturing an important moment in time. The last known photograph of Michael Collins alive taken by amateur photographer Agnes Hurley shortly before he died. Photo courtesy of Cork City and County Archives Service Just how important became clear soon afterwards when Michael Collins was fatally wounded in an ambush at Béal na Bláth that evening. Agnes Hurley's moment of serendipity had been transformed into something exceptional; her image remains the last known photograph of the revolutionary leader alive. That fact is noted on the photograph itself. Someone, though probably not Agnes, wrote on the back: 'Last snap of M. Collins taken on Tuesday, 22nd Aug 1922 a few hours before ambush.' It's written in pencil and then traced over in pen sometime later, as if to ensure the message was preserved for posterity. But Agnes Hurley's brush with history did not end there. The following day, as she and her younger siblings Julia and Maurice were taking grain to Howard's Mill in Crookstown, they passed the site of the ambush. She took another photograph which has this note on the back: 'Scene of death of Michael Collins taken day following ambush; 23rd Aug 1922.' Agnes's niece Mim O'Donovan takes up the story: 'She had her camera and took a photo of the side of the road. There was a big pool of blood on the road. Then they saw a collar which had blood on it. They walked along the higher parallel road, where the anti-Treaty IRA had taken up their positions, and saw what they described as nine indentations; places where men had been leaning against the fence and ditch. They saw empty casings too and gathered up a few which they took home along with what they believed was Michael Collins's collar. Police forensics were still a way off, but Agnes and her siblings saw the importance of what they had discovered although, unlike the photographs, those artefacts were later thrown out. But that's a story for later. In 1922, Agnes was a teenager with a deep interest in photography. She got her Brownie box camera the year before and had started to hone her skills taking family portraits at her parents' farm in Mallowgaton. While it was relatively unusual for such a young woman in rural Ireland to be so interested in photography, the Brownie camera, introduced by Kodak in 1900, had turned ordinary people into photographers for the first time. It was cheap and easy to use. All you had to do was point and shoot. As the advertising jingle went: 'You press the button, we do the rest.' Agnes Hurley also photographed the scene of the ambush, the following day, and saw blood on the road and a collar belonging to Michael Collins in the background. Photo courtesy of Cork City and County Archives Service The Brownie was also seen as a fashion accessory, in the States at least, and it allowed women to chart their lives in a way that had not been possible before. We don't know if Agnes Hurley saw her box camera as fashionable or not, but she certainly wore it like a favourite accessory. Between 1921 and the early 1940s, she took hundreds of photographs, most of them beautifully composed photos of her family with their dogs or horses. She left her collection to her niece, Mim O'Donovan of Crookstown, who brought the Michael Collins and Beál na Bláth photos to the UCC Revolutionary Decade Roadshow in Clonakilty in 2012. A few years later, she donated them along with a number of personal photos to the Cork City and County Archive. Archivist Felix Meehan described the photos as precious artefacts which offer us an exceptional connection to the past. 'Holding a letter that someone has cried over transports you back to a time long gone,' he tells Irishwoman's Diary. 'A photograph, however, is even more vivid; capturing a moment that turned out to have such deep resonance in Irish history. "It is all the more poignant given that the person behind the lens was a young local woman who joined the crowd in Bandon that day.' Agnes Hurley. Photo courtesy of Cork City and County Archives Service Mim O'Donovan adds another layer to the memory of a day that would prove so pivotal in Irish history. Agnes Hurley's family were stooking barley – stacking the sheaves to allow them to dry – when Michael Collins's convoy passed by on its way to Béal na Bláth. They saw the motorcyclist, the Crossley Tender, the Leyland car and the armoured vehicle. They didn't realise then that it had anything to do with Michael Collins, just as they were unaware of the significance of the shots they heard ringing out in the August evening a short while later. Agnes Hurley later moved to England and worked as a teacher. She also worked in the Ministry of Pensions before returning to Ireland in the mid-1940s. She didn't say much about her historic photos of Michael Collins, but she did tell her niece what happened to the collar she believed to be his. Over to Mim: 'A few years after 1922, she was studying in Cork and her mother didn't think she was doing enough study – she was following [Irish republican activist and politician] Mary MacSwiney around. To discourage Agnes from being too political, she threw the collar and the bullet casings into a pile of manure. Imagine having those now. "Her mother didn't mind the War of Independence, but she hated the Civil War.' Mim knew Agnes well, having spent some time living with her on the family farm in Mallowgaton when she was a child. Her own mother, Julia, had four children under three so Mim moved in with her Aunt Agnes and her grandmother, Mary Good, for a time. 'Agnes was definitely a character,' Mim, a former public health nurse, recalls. 'She was easy to live with as long as you did what you were told.' Though Mim didn't always do that. One time, as a small girl, she admits to biting her brother Jer. When Jer told Agnes, she wouldn't believe him without seeing the evidence. 'When she found bite marks on Jer's arms, she turned to me and bit me – through the clothes – in the exact same spot. That was the last time I ever bit anyone.' In later years, Mim remembers Agnes as a woman who read voraciously and kept meticulous diaries. 'She could tell you exactly what the weather was like two weeks ago.' Those diaries don't survive, but happily her photographs do. She died on November 1, 1982. All Saints' Day. 'I remember a neighbour saying: 'Didn't she die on a grand day?''

I walked streets of Washington and saw scenes straight from disaster movie after terrifying breakdown in law and order
I walked streets of Washington and saw scenes straight from disaster movie after terrifying breakdown in law and order

The Irish Sun

time7 hours ago

  • The Irish Sun

I walked streets of Washington and saw scenes straight from disaster movie after terrifying breakdown in law and order

THE armoured vehicles were stationed in position, troops in combat fatigues buzzed around and temperatures headed towards 33C. But this wasn't a scene from Iraq or Afghanistan. We were standing in Washington DC, the birthplace of American democracy. 4 The Lincoln Memorial monument now serves as a backdrop to row after row of tents where homeless people are massed Credit: James Breeden for The Sun 4 Some were lying comatose on the floor unable to wake up Credit: James Breeden for The Sun Advertisement Donald Trump's decision to send in the National Guard was met with outrage, but a tour of the capital's streets by The Sun revealed, in just one single night, a terrifying breakdown in law and order. Washington's Lincoln Memorial is such a symbol of America that it features on the five-dollar bill. But the monument now serves as a backdrop to row after row of tents where homeless people are massed in a camp which looks like the cross-Channel migrant 'jungle' in Calais. Rubbish was strewn everywhere, and the occupants were clearly in it for the long haul. One had even somehow set up a washing machine. Advertisement READ MORE ON WASHINGTON DC NO-GO ZONE Washington will be besieged by riots if Trump wins or loses, says security chief Under a nearby bridge, mattresses and glass beer bottles lay scattered everywhere. Piercing scream I have never seen so many homeless in a city. Within 30 seconds of arriving at the world-famous Union Station, I was confronted by a woman lying on the floor, with her trousers falling down. More rows of homeless were slumped outside a library just a street away from the White House, and they took no heed of Trump's warning – telling me: 'We are never leaving.' Advertisement Some had been smoking what they told me was super-strength cannabis, and were lying comatose on the floor unable to wake up. A security guard at a nearby Hilton hotel said: 'You think this is crazy? You should have seen it last week. There was a shooting nearby.' Five US cities where Donald Trump could next launch militarized crime crackdown as DC launch exposes Democrat failures He claimed that at the weekend, kids go to party and take fentanyl – a drug said to be more dangerous than heroin – on the rooftop of a nearby hotel. Its swimming pool sits a matter of yards from the Capitol, home of America's parliament. One such get-together ended in a shooting – and when I left town the killer was still on the loose. Advertisement Not far away was a posh restaurant where the cheapest glass of wine will set you back 15 dollars. But diners peering through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows can see the canvas of a tent and half a dozen homeless people shouting and swearing. Locals say they are a group out of their minds on crack cocaine. One man verbally abused me as he held a sign condemning 'the human race' and another was seen shouting at a little girl that she was a 'b***h', because she didn't give him a dollar. Suddenly, there was a piercing scream and a woman had been knocked over by a speeding car. Advertisement Later, in scenes straight from a Hollywood disaster movie, we witnessed hundreds of FBI officers being briefed at a base near one of Washington's most dangerous neighbourhoods, Anacostia. One by one, their cars left the centre in dramatic fashion. That evening's mission: A crackdown on 'bloodthirsty criminals'. We attempted to take a leaf out of the FBI's book and venture into the neighbourhood ourselves but swiftly realised that was a bad idea, as masked gangs loitered on the streets looking for trouble. As we cruised back to town, we spotted six blacked-out SUVs full of Drug Enforcement Administration officers armed with machine guns stopping a car and arresting a wrong 'un. Another man was half-naked and trying to dance with scared tourists Scarlet Howes A crazed man sat in just his underpants at a bus stop he had turned into a makeshift home, and was terrifying people. Advertisement A woman coming home from work was so scared she jumped on the wrong bus just to escape from him. He had taken fentanyl and, when he saw us, put his middle finger up. Another man was half-naked and trying to dance with scared tourists who just wanted to see the city's famous landmarks. It seemed the men who Trump called 'drugged-out maniacs' were lurking around almost every corner. And his plan was in full force, as nearly every street had a police car parked up, or a special agent. Advertisement There were too many of them to count. 4 The Sun's Scarlet speaks to a homeless man in the city centre Credit: James Breeden for The Sun

TikTok migrant who taunted Brits filmed sick ‘how to kill your wife' rant for followers weeks before arriving in UK
TikTok migrant who taunted Brits filmed sick ‘how to kill your wife' rant for followers weeks before arriving in UK

The Irish Sun

timea day ago

  • The Irish Sun

TikTok migrant who taunted Brits filmed sick ‘how to kill your wife' rant for followers weeks before arriving in UK

THE TikTok migrant who taunted Brits from his hotel room was reported to police for telling men how to kill their estranged wives in a vile video filmed weeks before he crossed to the UK. Parwiz Hanifyar, inset, who we can reveal as the man behind the Alexandra420 account, even told 70,000 followers how to cover up their crimes in a video filmed in Germany. 7 TikTok migrant Hanifyar in a taxpayer-funded hotel near Heathrow Credit: Tiktok 7 Hanifyar spouts his 'kill wife' advice on TikTok before it banned him Credit: TikTok 7 The TikTok asylum seeker smirking on dinghy to the UK The Afghan, in his early 20s, even urges them to sink booze before attacking them to get a softer sentence. The misogynist's tirade was streamed in Germany before he paid smuggling gangs to get him across the Channel last Saturday. Hanifyar is now in a taxpayer-funded hotel near Heathrow. Last night he faced calls to be deported after his TikTok video was reported to UK authorities. Hanifyar, who posted as Alexandra420 before his account was banned, told his 70,000 followers last month: 'A brave man does not allow his wife to marry another man, even have children and live with someone else.' He tells viewers to buy a household item, which The Sun is not naming, to use as a weapon. He then adds: 'Before I kill her, I drink a bottle of alcohol. "Don't get too much drunk. "Kill her immediately. 'When the police comes, they say, he was drunk. Illegal migrant LIVE STREAMS step by step channel crossing & boasts 'my dream was to come here' from 4 star asylum hotel "How many years of prison you will get? Seven years. "You will have academic courses in prison. 'After seven years, you have learned something, and you are only 30 and sexually very strong. 'Marry a new woman. You must do this technique.' These quotes are sickening. He is now in the UK and clearly a danger to women Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp MP said last night: 'These quotes are sickening. HIS SICK RANT "I will let her sleep first. Before I kill her, I drink a bottle of alcohol. I have never drunk alcohol in my life, but I teach you the technique to get less punishment. Just drink a bottle of it. Don't get too much drunk. Kill her immediately. When the police comes, they say, he was drunk. How many years or prison you will get? 7 years. During 7 years you will have academic courses in prison. After seven years you have learned something and you are only 30 years old and sexually very strong. Marry a new woman. You must do this technique." "He is now in the UK and clearly a danger to women. "He should be arrested and immediately deported.' Hanifyar lived in Berlin for up to three years before he was moved to France, then here. TikTok influencer Lemar was among residents who reported Hanifyar to German authorities last month. Lemar said: 'This man has been very cruel to Afghan women in Germany. 'He said horrific things on his streams. "I believed he should have been arrested in Germany, but instead he was able to leave.' Earlier this week we told how Hanifyar held a live Q&A from his room at the Crowne Plaza. He urged others to pay smugglers to reach the 'soft-touch' UK, adding: 'This is the best place. Tell your friends to come.' The Home Office said it does not comment on individual cases. 7 TikTok influencer Lemar was among those to raise the alarm over the vile posts 7 Hanifyar held a live Q&A from his taxpayer-funded hotel room Credit: Tiktok 7 The Crowne Plaza hotel near Heathrow Credit: Dan Charity

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store