There was a knife in my leg... I was fighting three London jihadis
THE policeman who fought all three London Bridge terrorists singlehandedly has revealed that he thought his ‘time was up’ after receiving terrible injuries.
PC Wayne Marques, 38, was the first officer to arrive at the scene of carnage and took on the fanatical knifemen, armed only with a metal baton.
The attackers confronted him like a ‘wolf pack’ after mowing people down in a van and then slashing dozens of others with long knives in central London.
PC Marques, who had been a policeman for less than two years, managed to smash one of the jihadists across the head ‘with everything I had’.
But the three men rounded on him, temporarily blinding his right eye with a heavy blow as he was stabbed repeatedly in the leg and hand.
The British Transport Police officer was on patrol on June 3 around London Bridge Station when he came across what he thought was a gang fight.
But an off-duty Metropolitan Police officer told him that drinkers were being attacked by men armed with knives.
PC Marques said: ‘I remember grabbing my baton with my right hand. I took a deep breath and I just charged the first one.
‘As I got near him, I swung at him with everything I had, as hard as I could, straight through his head, trying to go for a knockout blow.’
The terrorist ‘yelped in pain’ as he deflected the baton with his arm before he and the two others attacked the police officer in a 90-second ordeal.
One of them stabbed him in the forehead, causing ‘instant darkness’ as he lost the sight in his right eye before blood began pouring down his face. PC Marques said: ‘He’d hit me so hard that my right eye went lights-out straight away. I just went blind.
‘The second one and the third one, I was fighting left to right because I only had one eye.’
At that point, he was stabbed in the leg by the first attacker.
He said: ‘I’m thinking, “S***, there’s a knife in my leg” while I’m fighting the second one and the third one.’ After being stabbed in the hand, he could remember little except for ‘swinging all over the place’.
Seconds later, knifemen Youssef Zaghba, Khuram Butt and Rachid Redouane stood facing him. PC Marques said: ‘The three of them were almost shoulder to shoulder, like a little wolf pack, and they’re staring at me – that’s when I get to size them up.
‘The short one on the right, he was the one I heard saying, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.” He said it a few times, eyes bulging.
‘I’m basically like a cowboy waiting for the draw, waiting for them to make their move.’
Instead, the killers rushed towards Borough Market, where they continued their rampage.
Minutes later, Zaghba, 22, Butt, 27, and Redouane, 30, were shot dead by police, having already killed eight people.
PC Marques’ sight has returned but he is struggling to recover from his other injuries.
At the time, he did not realise how badly he was hurt, he said, even though he was aware of being stabbed repeatedly.
Other police arrived and as a colleague sent an emergency ‘officer down’ radio message, PC Marques told him: ‘Go get ’em, you’ve got to go get ’em.’
He began to feel a ‘black cloud’ descend as he fought to remain conscious, adding: ‘I pretty much knew (my) time was up.’
He told a colleague to give last messages to his parents and partner, adding: ‘That was it. Time was up. It’s hard to explain what you kind of think and feel.’
His next clear memory is waking up in hospital, feeling a mixture of relief and shock.
After several operations, he was discharged on Friday, almost three weeks later.
Asked whether he will return to frontline duties, he said his family and partner did not want him to, adding: ‘That may be taken out of my hands depending on what state I’m in.’
‘They stood like a little wolf pack’