I feared a bomb but threw chairs, glasses.. I wish I’d saved more
Terror hero on tackling London Bridge trio
WHILE most people understandably fled or hid from the London Bridge killers, hero Ozzie Gandaa charged directly at them.
The bouncer, 33, had seen colleagues stabbed by the three crazed jihadis at the Wheatsheaf pub in Borough Market.
He and pal Ishmerai Muhammad, 21, threw chairs and glasses at the terrorists – stalling them until armed police arrived and shot them dead.
Ozzie wept last night as he said he wished he could have saved more victims. He said: “I still blame myself for not doing more to help those who were injured and killed but people tell me not to be an idiot. I wish I could have stopped it from happening.
“I was meant to visit some injured colleagues in hospital yesterday but it’s too hard just now.
STRONG
“One girl had been stabbed in her neck and sides, three or four times. She’s a little girl but strong. I have spoken to them on the phone, they are doing OK.
“I’ve had a few people send me messages saying, ‘Thank you, you saved us’. It was just something that needed to be done.”
Ozzie came face to face with ringleader Khuram Butt, 27, as he and Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, caused carnage.
He got a call from a pal to say someone had been stabbed and ran outside to see if could help.
Ozzie, a dad of one from Notting Hill, said: “He ran towards me. I asked him to stop but he carried on in the opposite direction.
“He looked more frightened than me. Then I heard bottles smashing and 50 or 60 people started running towards me.
“I thought it was a fight between two people, then I saw two people in front of me being stabbed. The terrorist just
looked up at me and said, ‘I will stab a black man soon’.
“But I continued to walk towards him and that’s when I saw what he had on his waist – it looked like six silver canisters. I realised it was a terror attack. We thought a bomb was going to go off.” Ozzie put fears for his own safety aside to stop the attackers.
He said: “We picked up whatever we could find, whether it be a chair or a glass.
“We were throwing chairs. Then we heard sirens and the police arrived.”
Ozzie then went to a friend’s house, where he was comforted by brother Joe, 27. Joe was horrified he had put himself in such danger, as he could have left his seven-year-old son, also called Ozzie, without a dad.
Ozzie said: “He literally hit me six times and said, ‘Don’t ever do that, what is wrong with you? You have a son’.
“I couldn’t think of my son or I wouldn’t have gone back. I had to go out of my head. If I’d thought about him, I probably would have run the other way.
“I’m scared for the world he’ll grow up in. We don’t know who these guys are. They are among us and look like the kind of people I’d be friends with.”