A knife-wielding teenager who was shot dead outside Gran Canaria airport has been named as Abdoulie Bah.
The 19-year-old, from Gambia, first arrived to the holiday island by boat in 2019, and went on to become an integrated worker and athlete.
However, his friends claim he began to show signs of mental issues some weeks before he was filmed lunging at police officers with a knife in his hand.
Bah had reportedly tried to violently rob a taxi driver before ‘acting aggressively’ towards passersby. Police were called and five officers tried to subdue him, but he repeatedly tried to attack them.
He was shot at least five times, including in the neck, and died at the scene. The incident is currently under investigation, with the courts to probe whether the action was justified.
According to sources quoted by the EFE news agency, Bah arrived to the airport on Saturday with the intention of flying back to Gambia – despite his ticket being for the 22nd, some five days later.
He had confronted police the previous Wednesday, when he was spotted walking along a motorway and they asked him to get off the highway to avoid him being run over or causing a crash.
He was arrested on that occasion, for criminal trespass and assaulting a police officer, after shoving cops who were trying to bring him to safety.
Bah was brought before a judge and released.
How Bah fell through the cracks
Bah had been under the care of the Canary Islands government, but once he turned 18 on May 5 last year, he left the foster care network and found himself living on the streets.
According to Spanish reports, he managed to get himself work and a place to live. His latest job was working as an educator in a centre for migrant children in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
He was able to use his own experience as migrant to relate to the youngsters – plus his knowledge of six languages, including four African dialects and English and Spanish.
Bah was also a keen footballer and until last season was part of the Lomo Blanco SJA youth team – who said he was their best player.
But people close to Bah said he struggled without the safety net of the foster care system.
This was despite the fact that he had many transferable skills. He had graduated from secondary school at the Santa Brigida Institute, had completed basic vocational training as an administrator, had work experience as a car mechanic, bricklayer, and kitchen assistant in his home country, and had trained as a farm labourer in the Canary Islands with the farmers’ coordinator COAG (Coag).
But for the past few weeks, friends said he showed signs of mental health problems, so much so that an NGO wanted him to see a doctor.
One of his best friends, Abdolualha Camara, said: ‘He was a very good boy, very quiet, shy, but a few weeks ago he changed. Something happened in his head; he talked to himself, saying they wanted to eat him.’
Before the first incident on the motorway, Camara recalls, he and his roommate had to call the police because he had locked himself in the house and wouldn’t let anyone in or go out.
