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Wales Online
Jun 24 2006
Gareth Morgan, Western Mail
A FATHER-OF-THREE begged police to kill him like Tube station shooting victim Jean Charles de Menezes, a court heard yesterday.
Andrew Murphy, 36, dialled 999 and told operators he was about to blow up a block of flats with a rocket-propelled grenade. He told an emergency operator, “I’m going to detonate this building here and there are children upstairs. I want your sharpshooters to put a bullet in me like that chap on the Tube.”
Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot dead by mistake in an anti-terrorist operation at Stockwell station on the London Underground last July.
Cardiff Crown Court heard jobless Murphy had taken a cocktail of alcohol and anti-depressants after being told his four-year-old daughter was to be adopted.
An armed response unit arrived outside his home in Plas-y-Delyn, Lisvane, Cardiff, and a three-and-half-hour stand-off took place.
When Murphy finally gave himself up police found 30 weapons – all of them replicas.
Murphy admitted threatening to damage property and was jailed for two years.