British tourist Ian Tickhill bravely chased a man wielding a machete into the sea after being attacked on a Morocco beach.
Despite blood pouring from a wound in his leg, the 58-year-old from Hull in East Yorkshire sprang into action when his assailant went on the rampage in Agadir on Thursday.
Mr Tickhill and his wife Debby were enjoying a spot of sunbathing when the man produced his blade and began attacking people, apparently at random.
He told the Mirror: “He caught five of us altogether. By the time he got to the sea I think he’d lost it and didn’t know what else to do. The police just thought ‘we’ll wait’ because he had quite a heavy tracksuit on, it’s not going to take long for you when you’re treading water in hot weather.
“As he hit my wife I went to stand up and that’s how he caught my leg.
“I started chasing him and that’s when my wife shouted me back and I thought I better go and see if he’s injured. She told me I was bleeding.”
He continued: “The first lady he hit is actually a Belgian-Moroccan lady. She looks like a typical local. He wasn’t targeting white people or anything. He didn’t even shout anything. He just ran down.
“There’s only 100 metres of beach before you’re in the sea and that’s literally how long it took.”
Mr Tickhill was remarkably sanguine about his injury, explaining: “At first I thought he’d hit me with a baton or a truncheon or something.
“I just wrapped my towel around it. They took us in an ambulance to the hospital.”
Locals came down to the edge of the sea to prevent the man coming back to shore, Mr Tickhill said.
Debby suffered a slash wound on her back, and the couple spent about 90 minutes getting hospital treatment before providing the police with statements, returning to their hotel by 7.30pm. Officers told them the man had mental health problems, was a drug addict and had been arrested on other occasions.
The attack did not prevent the couple, who fly back to the UK tomorrow, from going back to the beach, Mr Tickhill stressed.
He added: “It was nothing like what they were saying, there was no mass hysteria and screaming. It could happen anywhere, you’re walking down any city in the world, and you meet an idiot. People with small kids were just getting the kids out of the way, which you’d expect.
“The police patrol the beach anyway, there are police there all the time. He must have noticed the pattern and just gone for a gap. If he had hit a kid, a small child it would have been bad, but fortunately, it wasn’t. They’re making something out of nothing. I’d definitely come back.”
