Stephen Crean is at home at his flat in Wimbledon, southwest London, on a drizzly Monday evening. On the wall behind him hang a red Nottingham Forest football scarf, his wedding photo and more family photographs. The past few days of his life could not have been more different than the joyful moments depicted.
On Saturday night, the 61-year-old fended off a man wielding a large kitchen knife on a busy train from northern England towards the UK capital. Walking down the carriage, the attacker ultimately hospitalised 11 people – including Mr Crean himself.
The incident is still a bit of a blur, though more comes back to him as time passes. He recalls the 15 minutes from the moment the attacker boarded the train to when passengers could finally flee after the conductor diverted to an unscheduled station. He remembers the man shouting at him, asking: “Do you want to die?”
Mr Crean, who was returning from Nottingham where he had watched Forest play Manchester United, was stabbed six times on Saturday night – down his back, on his head and through four fingers. His heavily bandaged hand is “throbbing a bit now because it’s been a few days”.
RM Block
“I know the proper pain is going to start now,” he says.
He somehow remains mellow and composed when telling The Irish Times about the traumatic event, which he not only witnessed but intervened in. Because Mr Crean placed himself directly in front of the attacker, his fellow passengers were able to run down the carriage to relative safety.
“If he got past me, he’d have gotten to the younger generation on the train,” he says. “If he gets to them, then he wins. Why should I let him win? We got him in the end, but if he got to them he’d have took more people out, more than the 10 or 11.”
A man in his 30s appeared in court on Monday for the attack, as well as for a separate attack in London earlier on Saturday. He has been charged with 10 counts of attempted murder.
Mr Crean, the son of an inner-city Dublin mother and a Roscommon father, cherishes the childhood memories of the six weeks he and his four siblings spent in Ireland every summer to visit their cousins.
“We used to head to the seaside, up and down the coast, and we had great times. We went to Roscommon, Greystones, Cork,” he says, adding that he travels to Ireland every year as he’s an avid Republic of Ireland football fan. He often went to Dublin for U2 concerts in the past.
“When I get better, I’ll hopefully be going again,” he says. “I’ll always be Irish in my veins, it’s always been there and it’ll never go away.”
Since Saturday night, fellow Nottingham Forest fans have taken to social media to thank him for his bravery, calling him “the very best of us” and “an absolute Forest hero”.
Some add that “he won’t have to buy another pint in Nottingham ever again”. But Mr Crean naturally shifts the focus away from himself. He wants, instead, to focus on the other people on the train – the police who arrived at the station and the medics who treated so many people.
He doesn’t even want to take credit for his bravery. “That’s the Irish upbringing for you – that’s what we do," he adds. “We stand by each other. I’ll stand by my family, my friends, anyone in trouble. I’ll always be like that.
“There were probably Irish people on that train too. Of course I would protect them and of course I’d do it for anyone. I’d do it for a stranger.”
Mr Crean’s hand will probably require further surgery. Dried blood is still visible on his hair above a slowly healing wound. He can’t sit particularly comfortably now because of the scars on his back and he hasn’t slept well since Saturday night – although he says he never really has.
