Suspect was late for Muslim march so had to alter target
THE Finsbury Park terror suspect had intended to target a Muslim march in London but arrived too late and so allegedly attacked worshippers at a mosque instead, it is claimed.
Darren Osborne, 47, told locals in a Cardiff pub on Saturday night he was “going to do something about them”, after hearing there was a Ramadan rally planned in the capital the following day.
Hours later police missed a chance to prevent the attack when he was reported for being drunk and asleep in the cab of his hire van, but not held. Mr Osborne, a father of four from Cardiff, remained in custody at a south London police station last night, where he was being questioned in connection with the terrorist attack in north London in which one man died and nine others were injured.
Mr Osborne’s sister, Nicola, claimed yesterday he had tried to kill himself a few weeks ago by jumping into a river and had asked to be sectioned.
Andy Parker, the landlord of his local pub, claimed that on Saturday Osborne had been ranting about the pro-palestinian Al Quds day rally, which took place on Sunday afternoon in London.
Mr Parker, who runs the Hollybush pub in Pentwyn, said: “He was very motivated about the Muslim Al Quds Day rally going on on Sunday in London and kept saying: ‘Our brothers and sisters are dying and someone needs to do something about it’. He kept saying he would do something about it, but he kept going on about it, and was saying we need to ‘stand up to Muslims’; it is ‘time we did something about them’.
“I did not like one bit of it so asked him to leave.”
One of the customers added: “He was going on about this march on Sunday and making notes on a piece of paper. He just kept saying ‘Al Quds’ and going on about how wrong it was that Muslims were taking over. Now I think about it maybe his plan was to target this march, but then went to the mosque when that didn’t work out.”
After leaving the pub, Mr Osborne fell asleep in the van that was used in the terror attack.
Edward Gardiner, who lives on the same housing estate as Mr Osborne, said he tried to wake him up but he smelled strongly of alcohol and was unresponsive so he phoned the police.
Mr Gardiner, 29, said: “I rang 101 – but I bet they get a lot of calls about drunk people at the wheel so I suppose how would they have known what he was going to go on and do? Hindsight is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?”
Nicola Osborne, 50, told Mailonline that her brother “tried to kill himself six, eight weeks ago. He threw himself into the river in Cardiff.
“He asked to be taken into care, to be sectioned but they wouldn’t do it. He was on anti-depressants. He came to see me after he tried to kill himself. He showed me the bump on his head. I don’t know how he got out of the river, or really what happened.”
South Wales Police said it responded to a non-emergency 101 call at 12.27am on June 18 after a report of a van parked in Cardiff’s Llanedeyrn area. “A male was asleep inside the vehicle, which showed no signs of having been driven recently. The officers’ assessment was no offences were disclosed.”
A little under 24 hours later it is alleged that Mr Osborne deliberately drove the hire van into a group of worshippers who had just left the Muslim Welfare House mosque, 160 miles away on Seven Sisters Road in north London.