STUDENT ‘PLAYED DEAD’ AFTER BEING STABBED BY A TERRORIST SHE KNEW
Woman pleaded with attacker to stop
A SURVIVOR of the Fishmongers’ Hall terror attack has told how she ‘played dead’ after Stoke-on-trent terrorist Usman Khan stabbed her repeatedly.
Convicted terrorist Khan, aged 28, killed Cambridge University graduates Saskia Jones, 23, and Jack Merritt, 25, on November 29 in 2019.
He injured three more people during a five-minute rampage at a Learning Together event before being shot dead by police on London Bridge.
Isobel Rowbotham worked part-time as an office manager for Learning Together, an organisation dedicated to the education of prisoners.
Giving evidence at Guildhall in the City of London, Ms
Rowbotham, a student at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, said she had been in the foyer when Mr Merritt emerged covered in blood.
She said: “He was shouting that he had been stabbed. He was holding his stomach and had obviously been injured.
“There was a lot of blood. He was wearing a white shirt so the red blood was quite obvious. He was hunched and in a lot of pain.
“I looked around to my left and then I saw Usman coming towards me with knives in his hands.”
Ms Rowbotham said he was a few metres away, holding two big kitchen knives and moving ‘purposefully’.
“I knew who it was and said ‘No, Usman, please don’t’.
“He was not going to stop. I turned to my left and just tried to hunch and protect myself.”
When he stabbed her repeatedly it felt like being punched, she told jurors.
She added: “I remember his final stabs were in my neck and it felt sort of like he thought they were final stabs, as in they were intended to finish me.
“I was on the floor and had closed my eyes but could still hear.
“I decided to play dead just in case he came back again and realised I wasn’t dead straightaway.
“I tried to slow down my breathing and blood flow as much as possible.”
Ms Rowbotham was given first aid before being taken to hospital, the court heard.
Housekeeping supervisor Ama Otchere said she believed Khan, who had lived in both Tunstall and Cobridge, was reciting from the Koran in Arabic.
Learning Together research associate Simon Larmour met Khan in March 2019 following his release from prison and followed up with phone calls.
Initially, Khan was ‘quite neurotic’ and focused on his time in prison but went on to discuss writing and trying to visit his family during later conversations, the court heard.
On the morning of November 29, Mr Larmour had met Khan at Euston Station and escorted him to Fishmongers’ Hall.
Earlier, Khan called him ‘panicking’ that his train to London was cancelled and Mr Merritt had stepped in to help find another one, the court heard.
The inquest into the two murder victims continues on Monday before it is followed by a separate inquest on Khan.