Woman throws herself into the Thames to escape carnage
Horrified bus passengers and tourists see 4x4 driver mount curb and scatter bodies across the bridge
IT APPEARED to be all she could do to stay alive. As the grey Hyundai 4x4 swerved on to the pavement yesterday afternoon, witnesses said a woman threw herself off Westminster Bridge, plummeting nearly 20 feet into the waters of the Thames.
The Port of London Authority later confirmed that it had pulled a woman from the river who was still alive but with serious injuries.
On the bridge itself carnage ensued as the car repeatedly swerved on to the pavement, leaving more than 40 pedestrians injured and at least two dead in the space of 10 seconds.
“Oh God, it was horrible,” said Robert who was on the top deck of a bus. “All of a sudden I saw two Chelsea boots hit the window on the top deck. I thought someone had chucked their shoes at the window.
“I jumped up... I heard a scream. Then I looked at the pavement down below and I saw a girl’s legs sticking out of the back of my bus, under the wheel, a woman on the bridge reeling in pain.”
Michael Adamou, 25, was driving the 453 bus when he said he saw a Hyundai speeding in the direction of Parliament. He said: “As I turned left out of Whitehall, so turning left to go over the bridge, I saw a car knock two people over.
“Initially I thought he’s lost control of the car, but then I see quite a few people rushing into Parliament and police trying to stop everyone. After a few seconds I just heard gunshots. Everybody on my bus was panicking.”
He stepped off the bus to a scene of devastation. “The first thing I saw was the two people lying lifeless on the floor. They were on the pavement.
“He must have come down the whole side of the bridge on the pavement. I would say there were at least 15 or 20 people [lying on the pavement].”
Rob Lyon, a 34-year-old who works in marketing, managed to jump into the road on Westminster Bridge to avoid the car after he heard the “crunch of metal against the curb”.
He said: “We had just passed a group of Chinese tourists taking photographs of Big Ben. Suddenly I heard a crunch of metal against the curb. It was the wheel of the car.
“A colleague said, ‘Rob, get out of the way’. I saw people being hit. I jumped from the pavement into the road. I saw people passing me that had been hit. Someone that was hit, certainly a gentleman, was airborne. One lady tragically had gone under the bus, that was on the road. She didn’t look like she had much of a chance.
“It was almost like the world had slowed down. It was like being in a Hollywood movie instead of real life. I didn’t for a second think that someone was intentionally driving a car at me.”
“When I was getting everybody off the bus, because they made us leave the bus on the bridge, I heard one guy come running behind me shouting that his wife had jumped into the river to avoid getting knocked down.”
Steve Voake, 55, was walking across the bridge towards the South Bank when he saw the aftermath. He said he
‘It was almost like the world had slowed down. It was like being in a Hollywood movie instead of real life’
saw at least two bodies lying on the road and one in the water.
“I saw a trainer lying in the road and when I looked more closely I saw that there were a couple of bodies the other side of the road,” he said. “And when I looked over the side there was another body lying in the water with blood all around it.”
The car also hit a group of French pupils on a school trip, with two of them said to be in a critical condition. According to
a newspaper in Brittany, the three pupils from the Lycée Saint-Joseph de Concarneau were walking when the car hit them. “One of them ended up on the bonnet of the vehicle”, said one of the classmates who witnessed the scene, it was reported.
“We saw the car hit a group. Twenty seconds later, it was us,” said Kilian, one of the pupils, in a text message to his mother, the newspaper reported.
One of the teachers said: “Three of us were hit, we don’t know if they are dead or not. I cannot speak anymore, I don’t know what to say.” Also among those injured were three police officers who were on their way back from a commendation ceremony.
There were distressing scenes on the southern end of Westminster Bridge where a severely injured woman was seen being tended to by passers-by.
It appears that the injured woman, who had long blonde hair and was wearing black jeans and trainers, later succumbed to her injuries and was covered with a sheet by police. An American student who witnessed the scene said: “It was horrible. She’d been carried down from the bridge to be looked after, but I think she just have died because she was then moved out of sight.” A nurse who works in a high dependency unit at St Thomas’ Hospital, at the south end of the bridge where two people were taken following the attack, told how within half an hour, a “major incident” was declared. The nurse said: “We realised there was something going on. “From about 15:30 we were notified that no staff or patients were going to be able to leave the hospital.”