LONDON BRIDGE TERROR ATTACK Australian victims recount their horror as Britain suffers again.
Australian victims recount their horror as Britain suffers again
Australian Candice Hedge had just finished her shift waiting tables at Elliot’s Café in London’s Borough Market on the balmy Saturday evening of June 3, when the restaurant became a target for a band of killers. Having ploughed down pedestrians in a van that careened across London Bridge, three men were now embarking on a stabbing rampage in the Central London district. Hedge, from Dalby, Queensland, who had been in London for a year on a working holiday, had just sat down to dinner at Elliot’s
with her English boyfriend, Luke, when the men entered brandishing knives. Hiding under a table, the 34-year-old managed to evade the initial attack, but as one of the men was leaving he happened to spot Hedge. Coming up behind her, he grabbed her by the hair and slashed at her throat. “She was absolutely terrified,” her grandfather Brian Hedge tells WHO. “She thought she was going to die.”
For the third time in less than three months, terror had come to Great Britain. Over nine horrifying minutes, three attackers murdered seven people and injured 48, including at least two Australians. At press time, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there were also “very real concerns” for two other Australians, including missing Queensland nanny Sara Zelenak, 21, who was on the bridge as the terror unfolded. Islamic State claimed responsibility, though there is as yet no evidence the terror group were directly involved. London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a Muslim, condemned the rampage as a “cowardly attack on innocent Londoners and visitors to our city.”
Hedge, who survived the stabbing, “is in shock,” says Brian, who talked to his granddaughter on the Monday morning. “But she sounded fairly good and she’s positive.” Australian Andrew Morrison, who was in London visiting his sister, was also stabbed during the attack. “He’s fine,” his relieved father, David, who lives on the Gold Coast, tells WHO. “It could have been a lot worse.”
Tragically, for many it was. The white Hertz hire van holding the terrorists crossed London Bridge around 10 PM, “swerving on and off the pavement,” witness Mark Roberts told CNN. “It knocked over several people. It knocked someone 20 feet into the air. ” Some pedestrians jumped over the railing to avoid that fate. Said Roberts: “I could see maybe five or six bodies on the ground, not moving.”
The first victim was identified as Canadian woman Christine Archibald, who was due to marry fiancé Tyler Ferguson. “He is broken into a million pieces,” his sister Cassie Ferguson told US network CBC. “He held her and watched her die in his arms.”
“She thought she was going to die” —Candice Hedge’s grandfather, Brian
The three attackers then left the van and began a stabbing spree in Borough Market, an area dotted with pubs and restaurants, all filled with Saturdaynight revellers. “When I first saw them, they went, ‘This is for Allah,’ and they ran up and stabbed this girl, maybe 10 times, 15 times,” witness Gerard Vowls told the BBC. Halima Madden was out with friends watching the Champions League football final when the violence started. “Every five seconds you hear, ‘Someone has got a machete, get back inside!’ ” the 25-year-old tells WHO.
As the carnage continued, a taxi driver, Chris, saw one of the attackers on the street. “I thought, ‘I’m going to try and knock him down,’ ” Chris told London’s LBC radio. “I was about to ram one of them, but he side-stepped and three police officers came running towards them. I was shouting at everybody, ‘Just get away from the area, stay back, just run the other way.’ ”
Hearing no such warning, Morrison, a Sydney-born electrician based in Darwin who had just finished watching the football at a pub, was walking along the street when “all of a sudden, a guy comes up with a knife,” he said in a video interview uploaded to Reddit. He was stabbed in the neck but managed to fend off the attacker and run to a nearby pub for help. “I hate [saying] it, but he looked like a f--king Muslim terrorist,” said Morrison. “I was like, ‘ What are you doing, mate?’ ”
Armed police were on the scene within minutes. “It took the first responders two minutes to get there,” witness Jamie Mcdermott tells WHO. “I saw a stream of 20 ambulances go towards London Bridge.” At 10.16 PM police fired an “unprecedented” 50 shots at the men, killing all three, who were wearing fake explosive vests. At press time police had named two: Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, believed to be the ringleader, and Rachid Redouane, 30. “I heard a gunshot and a man was on the floor,” says Madden. “I was in a bit of shock.” The shock spread to Australia on Sunday morning, where David and Irene Morrison tried to reach their son, who they knew was injured. Morrison, however, had lost his mobile phone in the attack. “I was frantically trying to call the hospital, they wouldn’t give me any information,” David tells WHO. “Imagine the state of his mum.” Candice Hedge’s family also feared the worst. “All day
we knew about it and then no-one told us anything so it was a bloody long day,” says Brian. When he was finally connected to his granddaughter, “She told me she’s a fighter,” says Brian, “and she’s going to get over it.”
Defiance was the theme in Great Britain, where its mantra of “We Are Not Afraid,” sparked after the Westminster attack in March, held strong. Asked by a journalist if he was “terrified,” Borough Market local Chris Charlton, 39, scoffed at the idea. “Terrified? That’s a bit strong. We’re probably going to go shopping. Very mundane, sorry,” said Charlton, who was visiting the police-guarded site with his wife the morning after. “You couldn’t let the terrorists win.”