Sick smiles of killer who told kids ‘I’ll die for God’
Days before attack he warned mum: They’ll say I’m a terrorist
WESTMINSTER terrorist Khalid Masood grins just days before killing five people in his atrocity – after telling his children he would “die fighting for God”.
The chilling boast came in video calls to his younger kids, who lived in East London while he stayed in Birmingham, an inquest was told yesterday.
After picking up the car he used in the attack he drove from Birmingham to Wales for what is believed to have been a “goodbye visit” to mum Janet Ajao, Det Chief Insp Dan Brown told the hearing.
As Masood, 52, left her the next day – five days before the March 22, 2017 attack – he said: “They will say I’m a terrorist. I’m not.”
CCTV shows Masood, 52, shopping in a Tesco store in Spring Hill, Birmingham, on March 9 for items including two £16 carving knives.
He also searched online for a calor gas centre in the city. It was “at least possible” he planned to use gas as a weapon, Mr Brown said.
Masood was shot dead by police after ploughing his rented 4x4 into Kurt Cochran, 54, Leslie Rhodes, 75, Aysha Frade, 44, and Andreea Cristea, 31, on Westminster Bridge and stabbing PC Keith Palmer, 48, outside Parliament.
As he plotted his attack he fixated on “racist and rude” Donald Trump and “liar” Theresa May. On the morning of the Westminster horror he made online searches for Prime Minister’s Questions, taking place there that afternoon.
The court earlier heard his mum feared he would kill while still a teenager when he went out to pubs and clubs looking for a fight.
He first got into trouble for shoplifting aged 14 and living in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, with his mother, stepdad and two stepbrothers.
Mr Brown said: “She described him as an angry person. She was worried he’d kill someone through fighting. His brothers suggested he was a violent person, who wouldn’t back down from a disagreement.”
In 2003 Masood plunged a carving knife through the nose of Daniel Smith, who had suggested Masood was an undercover policeman.
He was cleared of attempted murder after claiming self-defence.
He converted to Islam in his first spell in jail, and cited his acquittal, and the survival of his eldest daughter in a car accident, as “miracles” that reinforced his faith.
In the days before the attack he stayed in a hotel at an M25 services in Surrey where CCTV caught him smiling in reception. The inquest continues at the Old Bailey.