Nine minutes of horror, halted by
Until 10.07pm, it was a typical Saturday night in Borough Market – then three terrorists struck with a van and knives
The horror lasted nine minutes. That was all the time it took for three terrorists to wreak havoc on London’s streets. In their wake, they left a trail of devastation. Seven innocent people would be murdered and a further 48 injured and needing hospital treatment, 21 of them critical.
Between 10.07pm and 10.16pm on Saturday, the three men, inspired by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, went on the rampage. First they had used a rented van as their weapon of choice, knocking down pedestrians on London Bridge, before abandoning the vehicle and walking from restaurant to restaurant and bar to bar in nearby Borough Market, slashing and stabbing their victims. They shouted “this is for Allah” and wore fake suicide vests, presumably to deter any would-be heroes, not that it stopped people from trying.
Countless tales emerged yesterday of the selfless attempts to thwart the killers, including a transport police officer armed only with a baton, who was one of the first on the scene. He was stabbed and slashed in the head, face and leg as he tried to grapple with the attackers. In a race against time, armed police tracked the terrorists through the market before shooting them down outside a pub at 10.16pm. The carnage would end there. A photograph taken by a witness showed the men lying on the ground. One wore an Arsenal shirt, another a black hoodie. They looked like any ordinary “blokes” on a Saturday night out.
Until 10.07pm, it had been like any other Saturday night.
Tourists strolling across London Bridge on a balmy summer’s evening stopped to take photographs of the Shard at its southern end, or else of Tower Bridge to the east.
The white van crossed the bridge from the north. It accelerated as it reached the bridge.
The van began weaving from side to side in what was described as a repeated “S-shape”, as the driver aimed it at pedestrians.
Video footage emerged of one woman begging for her injured loved one to “hold on”. As a paramedic and police officer attempted to resuscitate the man, the unnamed woman could be heard crying: “Don’t let those f-----s do this.”
A 25-year-old man, who declined to be named, told of seeing a man and a pregnant woman unconscious on the road. “We thought it was a car accident but as we got closer we could see a lot of blood and bodies,” said the eyewitness. “There was a pregnant woman on the right who was severely injured and on the left there was a man being resuscitated, but he started breathing. We don’t know whether the woman survived.”
Holly Jones, a BBC reporter on the bridge at the time, said the van was “probably travelling at about 50 miles an hour”.
Ms Jones said: “Myself and two pedestrians jumped out of the way. He swerved right round me and then hit about five or six people. He hit about two people in front of me and then three behind.”
Ian Houghton, 55, chief sub-editor of The Sunday Times, who had just finished his shift, was walking over the bridge when the van came at him. “People were screaming and leaping out of the way,” said Mr Houghton, “There was debris flying everywhere, bits of the car and people’s possessions. I stepped back on to the pavement and just as I did, the side of the van brushed my left hand.”
There were reports – unconfirmed – of pedestrians jumping into the Thames to escape and that as many as 20 people were hit on the bridge. Dan Nguyen, 21, a tourist from California, who was taking photographs on the bridge, told of seeing victims being hurled into the river below. “I saw bodies flying off of the bridge, but I’m not sure whether this was voluntary or from the impact of the crash,” he said. “I was thinking of jumping off of the bridge myself, but the adrenaline wore off for a quick second as hope flooded in.” A police boat patrolled the waters below.
The van sped on. Its journey over the bridge probably took no more than 30 seconds. At the far end of the bridge, the van came to a halt, swerving on to the wrong side of the road before becoming wedged between traffic lights and the railings surrounding Southwark Cathedral.
The men jumped out, brandishing hunting knives, each a foot-long. They began stabbing their victims indiscriminately.
A taxi driver, who gave his name only as Chris, attempted to take matters in his own hands.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to try and hit him, I’m going to try and knock him down’,” Chris told LBC radio. “I spun the cab round, I was about to ram one of them, but he side-stepped and three police officers came running towards them with their batons drawn.
“I was shouting at everybody, just get away from the area, stay back, just run the other way. There were a good few hundred people out there.
“They’ve jumped out of the van and started stabbing people randomly.”
A British Transport Police officer, unarmed save only for a baton, tried to stop the men. The unnamed officer, who had been in the force only two years, suffered serious injuries to his head, face and leg. He remained in hospital last night although the injuries were not life threatening. Paul Crowther, the transport police chief constable, praised the officer after visiting him in hospital. “It became clear that he showed enormous courage in the face of danger, as did many others who were at the scene and rushed to help,” he said. “Although he is seriously unwell, he was able to recount how he faced the attackers armed only with his baton outside London Bridge station. For an officer who only joined us less than two years ago, the bravery he showed was outstanding and makes me extremely proud.”
The terrorists walked down the steps besides the cathedral and through its gardens into Borough Market, a fashionable food market with many popular restaurants and bars.
Armed police arrived at London Bridge about three minutes after the first call for help, made by a member of the public at 10.08pm. Ambulances had been called a minute earlier at 10.07pm.
The armed units hunted for the men through the covered market, much of which is built beneath a railway line, which will have protected the terrorists from being seen by police helicopters. The attackers passed one restaurant, Café Brood, but were deterred from entering because staff, several of them trained in the Albanian army, screamed at the marauders to stay away.
In Stoney Street, one of the market’s main thoroughfares, the terrorists walked into restaurants as crowds ran from them screaming.
Candice Hedge, 31, an Australian waitress at Elliot’s restaurant, had just finished her shift and was dining with her boyfriend. She tried to hide but was seen by the terrorists. One of them slashed at her neck and throat,
narrowly missing her windpipe. Kim Del Toro, Miss Hedge’s mother, said her daughter, unable to talk, made contact from her hospital bed at St Thomas’ via Skype and gave a “thumbs up”. “She went into surgery, but she’s going to be fine, thank goodness. She couldn’t speak, but I got to see her and she gave me the thumbs up, so I knew that she was OK.”
Miss Hedge posted on Facebook: “Bit of pain but I will survive. I’m doing OK. Still in hospital, but all in the clear. I really can’t talk. The f----stabbed me in the neck. Don’t worry too much. I love you all.”
At Black & Blue restaurant across the narrow street, there were reports of a woman who barricaded the doors to try to prevent the terrorists getting in. Aksha Patel, a taxi driver, said he gave a lift to the woman who “managed to hold the door for a few seconds but they overpowered her”.
Mr Patel added: “People managed to escape through the rear door so she saved maybe 20 people’s lives”.
But the men entered, according to witnesses, and began slashing at anybody who had not run for cover.
One female diner said: “We just saw three guys come into the restaurant, stab someone in the face and someone in the stomach.
“One of them had a big knife, then he came in and walked around the restaurant, I guess they just kind of stabbed anyone that they saw and knocked things on the ground and then we just hid.”
Out in the market, Gerard Vowls, who had been drinking in a nearby pub, tried to intervene. “All they wanted to do was kill people,” he said, as he watched one of the men stab a woman repeatedly. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever seen.” Mr Vowls hurled bottles and glasses at the men, but one of them rushed at him. “They kept coming to try to stab me … they were stabbing everyone. Evil, evil people.” Mr Vowls fled.
Alex Martinez was waiting tables at El Pastor restaurant. “I saw a man coming into the restaurant, holding a knife,” he said. “Everybody started screaming.” He ran out of the back door and jumped in a bin to hide.
Rhiannon Owen, a student nurse running past Applebee’s fish restaurant, saved several lives by screaming at diners and staff, warning them of an impending attack.
Miss Owen had been at a cash machine at London Bridge when a taxi driver yelled at her to run. “I turned and saw a man three metres from me, with a 12in blade, running towards me. I sprinted for my life. I saw a man get stabbed,” she posted on Facebook.
She fled into Applebee’s where staff, including Jack Applebee, the owner, jumped into action. Diners were led into the storage room and the doors locked. Mr Applebee said: “There was probably about 20, 30, maybe more, people running down the street and there was one particular girl who said ‘they’re stabbing everyone, you need to just go, go, go’.”
Mr Applebee shouted at customers to get to the back of the restaurant as he fumbled with his keys to lock the door and shutters. “Literally as I turned back, all of these men were standing there with machetes and some sort of belt on. I looked at them and genuinely it was very scary, and they just turned away. They just walked, carried on going, and it was like we got lucky there really.”
Jacky Dixon, 72, who was having dinner with her husband in Applebee’s, said of “the girl” that she “was absolutely beside herself. I think she actually saved our lives”.
At the Bread Ahead bakery, Florin Morariu, a Romanian chef, also decided to take on the terrorists, smashing one of them on the head with a crate. “We were looking out of the window because we saw that everyone was agitated, everyone was running, people, women... they were fainting, falling and we went outside to see what was happening.”
Mr Morariu went outside and saw two attackers stabbing wildly at their victims. At first he “froze”, but then he went and hit one of the attackers on the head with a crate.
“There was a car with a loudspeaker saying ‘go, go’ and they [police] threw a grenade .... and then I ran,” he added.
By now the net was closing in on the killers. A helicopter carrying elite SAS troops in a unit known as Blue Thunder had landed on London Bridge. As it turned out the troops were not needed.
Versions of events differ slightly, but by 10.15pm the armed police unit had tracked the terrorists to outside the Wheatsheaf pub, next door to Applebee’s. Officers took no chances, firing as many as 50 rounds in what was described by Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley as an “unprecedented” hail of bullets.