I was blind, there was a knife in my leg ... I was fighting all three jihadis
I’m like in a cowboy movie waiting for them to make their move...
THE policeman who fought all three London Bridge terrorists single-handedly spoke for the first time last night about how he thought his ‘time was up’ after receiving terrible injuries.
PC Wayne Marques, 38, was the first officer to arrive at the scene of carnage and took on the fanatical knifemen with only his metal baton.
The attackers – who were wearing fake suicide belts – confronted him like a ‘wolf pack’ after mowing people down in a van before slashing dozens of others with long knives.
PC Marques, who had been a policeman for less than two years, managed to smash one of the jihadists across the head ‘with everything I had’.
But the three men rounded on him, temporarily blinding his right eye with a heavy blow as he was stabbed repeatedly in the leg and hand.
The British Transport Police officer was on patrol on June 3 around London Bridge Station when he came across what he thought was a gang fight.
But an off-duty Metropolitan Police officer told him drinkers were being attacked by men armed with knives.
‘I remember grabbing my baton with my right hand. I took a deep breath and I just charged the first one,’ he said.
‘As I got near him I swung at him with everything I had as hard as I could, straight through his head, trying to go for a knock-out blow.’
The terrorist ‘yelped in pain’ as he deflected the baton with his arm before he and the two others attacked the police officer in a 90-second ordeal.
One of them stabbed him in the forehead causing ‘instant darkness’ as he lost the sight in his right eye before blood began pouring down his face.
PC Marques said: ‘He’d hit me so hard that my right eye went lights-out straight away, I just went blind.
‘The second one and the third one, I was basically fighting left to right because I only had one eye, so I’m moving left to right, left to right. At that point, he was stabbed in the leg by the first attacker. he said: ‘I’m thinking, “S***, there’s a knife in my leg” while I’m fighting the second one and the third one.’
After being stabbed in the hand he said he could remember little except for ‘swinging all over the place’.
Seconds later, knifemen Youssef Zaghba, Khuram Butt and Rachid Redouane stood facing him, with one chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’, Arabic for ‘God is great’. PC Marques said: ‘The three of them were standing almost shoulder to shoulder like a little wolf pack and they’re staring at me – and that’s when I get to size them up.
‘The short one on the right, he was the one I heard saying, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar”. He said it a few times, eyes bulging. I’m basically like a cowboy western movie waiting for the draw, waiting for them to make their move.’ But instead the killers rushed towards Borough Market where they continued their rampage.
Minutes later, Zaghba, 22, Butt, 27, and Redouane, 30, were shot dead by police, having killed eight people and injuring 48.
PC Marques said last night his sight had returned but he was struggling to recover from his other injuries.
At the time, he did not realise how badly he was hurt, he said, even though he was aware he was being stabbed repeatedly.
He added: ‘The adrenaline, the fighting, all of that, I could feel what they were doing to me but I couldn’t feel it at the same time. I could just feel that I’d been cut and hurt.’ Other police arrived, and as a colleague sent an emergency ‘officer down’ radio message, PC Marques told him: ‘Go get ‘em, you’ve got to go get ‘em.’ He lay on the ground and began to feel a ‘black cloud’ descend as he fought to remain conscious, adding: ‘I pretty much knew time was up.’
He said he told a colleague to give last messages to his parents and partner, adding: ‘That was it. Time was up. It’s hard to explain what you kind of think and feel at the time.’
His next clear memory is waking up in hospital, feeling a mixture of relief and shock.
After several operations, he was discharged on Friday, almost three weeks later.
But he has to take more than 20 pills a day, cannot walk unaided, has a scar above his right eye, struggles to grip with his left hand and has lost the feeling in the right side of his head where nerves were cut.
Asked whether he considered himself a hero, he said: ‘Am I a hero? I guess in a lot of people’s eyes I am, but there are still eight people that lost their lives and many more wounded.
‘By the time I got there some were already dead and dying. I couldn’t help everybody.
‘Being a hero was the last thing I was thinking about. Even fighting terrorists was the last thing I was thinking about.
‘All I was trying to do was keep people alive. That was my job – keep people alive. And that’s what I did, what I tried to do.
‘Hopefully, with the right help and care, I’ll get my legs back – that will be a great feeling.’
Asked whether he will return to frontline duties, he said his family and partner did not want him to, adding: ‘That may be taken out of my hands depending on what state I’m in.
‘When that bridge comes, I will make that decision. The only clear answer I have for you about being a police officer is it’s what I’m good at. I’m good at what I do.’