Man smashes car into police station, then sets road alight

COUNTER-TERROR officers were last night investigating an attack in which a car was driven into a police station entrance in north London before an attempt was made to set it alight.

The BMW smashed into the glass doors at Edmonton Police Station just before 7pm. The driver then got out and poured petrol on the car.

Witnesses described scenes of chaos in an area that was busy with pedestrians despite the lockdown.

One said the man was tackled by a pedestrian, before police officers took over and detained the suspect.

Video posted on social media showed the front of the car embedded in an illuminated entrance to the building on Fore Street. The suspect could then be seen pouring a flammable liquid on to the road and setting it alight.

A shop worker said the car ploughed into the building and the driver then tried to drive further into the station.

When he was unsuccessful, he “casually got out of the car with a tank of petrol” which he proceeded to pour on the road near people waiting at a bus stop. Motorcyclists scrambled out of the way before he set the road alight, the witness told The Daily Telegraph.

One witness, who asked not to be named, said: “All I could tell was that some bloke got tackled, he was setting stuff on fire. It looked like he was setting the floor on fire. He looked like someone very annoyed. The fire went out pretty quickly.”

Peter Allimadi, 30, said: “I came out of Lidl to see what the commotion was about: police screaming instructions to citizens to back away, some scared shoppers, commuters and parents running from the scene.”

The motive for the attack was not immediately clear, but Scotland Yard confirmed that officers from the Met’s counter-terrorism unit were assisting with the investigation.

One source told The Telegraph: “There is nothing at this stage to suggest that the incident was terror related. Police will want to look into the suspect’s background fully.”

The source said the man in custody was understood to be “Caucasian”.

A Met spokesman said the detained man was aged in his 40s, adding: “No injuries to any police officers or members of the public have been reported.”