Dad's heartbreaking vow after son murdered with his friends

The dad of a Liverpool man who was murdered in a terrorist attack in a Reading park has called for changes in the law to prevent further attacks. Gary Furlong’s son James was killed at the age of 36 along with his friends David Wails and Joe Ritchie-Bennett when Khairi Saadallah attacked them in Forbury Gardens in June 2020.

James was born and brought up in Childwall. He went to school at Saint Francis Xavier's College in Woolton, then studied at John Moores University, before taking up a teaching post at King David High School in Wavertree.

In 2021, Saadallah, of Basingstoke Road, Reading, pleaded guilty to three murders and three attempted murders - and was sentenced to a whole life order. Earlier this year, an inquest was held into the murders, which found they were "probably avoidable".

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Saadallah arrived in the UK in 2012 as a teenage refugee. He is said to have fought in the Libyan revolution, and suffered from PTSD. Before killing James and his friends, Saadallah spent years in and out of prison for a range of violent offences.

Earlier this week, Gary was interviewed by BBC Radio Berkshire. On the subject of mental health in prisons, he said: "There have been fundamental problems and still are fundamental problems in mental health services within prisons. People are being released from prison when they’re not actually being treated. There’s a problem in how we release people back into society. It is not managed.

Gary said: “[Saadallah] had come here as a 16-year-old and was known to be fighting [in Libya] for eight months and was part of a group called the 17th February Martyrs Brigade. And we allowed this man into this country under those circumstances. Some authorities said Saadallah was 'someone else’s problem' while the risks he posed were not managed. People put things into place but then don’t check that they’re actually working."

On the inquest into his son's death, Gary added: "What was clear through this process was the people involved were not properly trained - in some cases not trained at all - or the management of the process was very poor and someone was not checking what was actually happening. What is the government going to put in place to ensure what they say they are going to do has actually taken place?”

He added: "The thing I have always said from the start is when I finally leave this process I want to be able to say to James, Joe and David that I have done everything possible to make things better in their name. Their deaths have to count for something and if it saves lives in the future, I will feel justified for the tiredness, because it’s taken its toll on myself and my wife. It’s been very difficult."

Gary and his wife Jan have been in frequent contact with the families of the other men who died in the Reading attack. Speaking to the ECHO over the summer, Gary said: "That's been a big help to us. Jan often speaks to Joe's mum Charlene in America. We've been supporting each other through it. It's been a long and difficult road."

Jan, 63, has been putting her energies into helping others deal with trauma. She is now a peer support worker at Victim Support, offering support and advice to other people who have lost children through homicide.