Friends farewell victim with Queen and tears

Leslie Rhodes had no immediate family. So it felt only right, said his neighbours and friends of 40 years, that they should have been by his bedside when doctors turned off his life support machine.

Rhodes, 75, known as Les, was said to have been ‘‘as fit as a fiddle’’, having worked as a window cleaner well into retirement. He was on his way to St Thomas’ Hospital to be treated for glaucoma when he was struck by Khalid Masood’s Hyundai on Westminster Bridge.

Michael and Chris Carney, his neighbours in the south London block of flats where Rhodes lived for most his life, said they wept as he died listening to his favourite song, These Are the Days of Our Lives, by Queen.

‘‘Hopefully he knew we were there and could hear us. They say hearing is the last thing to go,’’ Chris Carney, 70, said.

‘‘He became like family. When you know someone like that, you can’t just let them die on their own.’’

She described how Rhodes always helped her with her shopping, and would cheerfully clean his friends’ and neighbours’ windows for free.

Michael Carney said Rhodes was ‘‘such a lovely fella who would never hurt anyone’’.

He added: ‘‘If he died of cancer or something like that, you could accept it – but like this, you just can’t take it. He was so fit, he would have lived until he was 90, but they took his life away.’’

Rhodes was the fourth victim to die as a result of the attack, after Kurt Cochran, 54, an American tourist; Aysha Frade, 43, a mother of two; and police officer Keith Palmer, 48.

He was unmarried, with no children, and lived alone in a flat just off Clapham Common.

He had a sister-in-law, Audrey, who was married to Rhodes’s late brother, Roy. She described the shock of seeing him, broken, in a hospital bed.

‘‘He was lying there with broken bones all over, broken ribs and a punctured lung. It was so awful, I can’t get the image of him lying there out of my head,’’ she said.