Caio Benicio, a Brazilian immigrant, was on his motorbike working for a delivery service in Dublin last Thursday when he saw what he thought was a fight and slowed down. As he got closer, however, he saw it was a man stabbing a young girl as a woman tried to get the girl away. Acting on instinct, Benicio says, he took off his helmet and swung it at the attacker, knocking him down and ending the knife attack that left four people injured, three of them children. (A 5-year-old girl, the most seriously injured child, remained in critical condition as of Saturday, as did a 30-year-old woman, per the BBC. The suspect was also injured in the incident.) Now, nearly $400,000 has been raised for Benicio by people grateful for his intervention, the New York Times reports.
"The man's a hero and the least we can do is buy him a pint so I'm asking you to donate the price of a pint of Guinness in your local to Caio so that he knows the people of Dublin appreciate him," reads the GoFundMe campaign, which is titled "Buy Caio Benicio a pint." The stabbings led to riots by far-right, anti-immigrant protesters after rumors spread online that the attacker was an immigrant, the New York Times reports, and some who contributed to the GoFundMe seemingly made note of that by leaving comments praising immigrants. Benicio, who has been living in Dublin for a year, has been saving up money to bring his wife and two children there. A 17-year-old who was interning at a local restaurant, training to be a chef, also intervened in the attack, CBS News reports. (More Dublin stories.)