Kiwi in loo during attack
Expat says ‘perfect timing’ kept her from being on London Bridge as chaos began
A“loo stop” may have saved a Kiwi from the weekend’s London terror at- tack.
Melanie King was near Borough Market when the attacks took place on Saturday night. Pedestrians were run down by three men in a van on London Bridge, and the attackers then went on a stabbing frenzy among the crowds at Borough Market.
Seven people died and about 50 were injured in the attack.
King told the Wanganui Chronicle it was only a loo stop that meant she was not on London Bridge when the van was mowing people down.
She saw a woman screaming and clutching her neck after being stabbed and ended up holed up in a pub as the drama continued to unfold.
King, 57, who works for computer giant IBM in London, was walking near Borough Market with two friends to catch a train to her Croydon home when the attacks happened.
She went into the Old Thameside Inn to use the toilet but when she came out of the pub she saw people running and yelling in the street.
“Then I saw a younger girl running towards us and she was clutching her neck and she was screaming.
“She was absolutely terrified — her eyes were wide.”
Soon after the pub’s manager came out on to the street.
“He yelled at us to ‘get in the pub, get in the pub now’.”
London Bridge was about 50 metres away and King could see red buses lined up on the bridge and the traffic stopped.
“There were blue lights flashing up on the bridge and there was a police boat on the river.”
King and her friends were locked in the pub with about 150 other people and moved
Hinto the back of the premises.
“Then we were told to go downstairs to the basement bar.”
They were there for about an hour before being evacuated by police. “And it was completely empty outside. I think we were the last pub on that side of the Borough Market to be evacuated,” she said.
“We were all in single file and there were armed guards literally every 10 metres.
“We were escorted down to Southwark Bridge and then we had to run across it, at which point there was a little bit of panic. I think they just didn’t want groups of people on the bridge.”
King said if it had not been for her toilet stop she would have been on the bridge at the time.
“Absolutely perfect timing — my friends laughed at me because my loo stops on the way home are legendary.
“We would’ve . . . stepped up on the London Bridge exactly when it happened.”
King, who has lived in London for 32 years but returns to Whanganui every year to see her father, said the experience had not given her second thoughts about living there.
She said bad things could happen anywhere.
“I could come back to New Zealand and there could be an earthquake. “It was a little bit too close for comfort, but that’s just what happened.
“I’ve had my experience with that now, thank you very much, and I don’t need it again.” Watch video from the London vigil at nzherald.co.nz