Coffee with friends, then moments later mum was stabbed in back by knife maniac
AS she bid farewell to her friends in the cafe, Monika Luftner declined an offer to stay for one more coffee.
Her decision almost proved fatal as within minutes she found herself caught up in the latest terror attack to blight the streets of the capital.
Having cycled less than 500 yards, the nursery teacher was confronted by jihadi Sudesh Amman, 20, who had just stolen a knife from a nearby shop while being tailed by intelligence officers.
As she cycled past, witnesses said he lunged and stabbed her in the back.
She survived the horror with minor injuries but friends said Miss Luftner, 51, is extremely lucky to be alive.
They also told how the incident could have been much worse had she not left her 12-year- old daughter in the café with them. Miss Luftner, who moved to the UK from Poland around 20 years ago, was pictured for the first time yesterday.
Friends told how onlookers rushed to her help, with one man covering her with a blanket and others guarding her belongings as she was treated on the pavement. Igor Kaminski, 43, a construction company owner, said: ‘ We offered our friend to stay for a coffee with us but she was in a hurry and left her daughter with us and went ahead of us and was stabbed.’
He added: ‘It will be different to live here from now on. I pass that spot several times a day.
‘Somehow I thought if I am not in the centre of London or not a gang teenager it doesn’t affect me or people close to me.
‘Obviously I was wrong. Small decisions.’
In the minutes after the attack, Miss Luftner called the friends she had just met telling them what had happened.
They contacted the victim’s husband Bryn Lockwood, a transport planner who was not in London at the time. After she was taken to hospital, photographs showed her bicycle propped up against a railing beside a bundle of her belongings on the street in Streatham, south London.
Miss Luftner was eventually taken to nearby St George’s Hospital in Tooting and released five hours later.
Parents at St Bede’s Catholic Infant and Nursery School in Lambeth, south London, called her an ‘amazing’ teacher.
One said: ‘ We were all so shocked and upset when we heard that Miss Luftner was hurt in the terrorist attack.
‘She is a really lovely lady and very popular with the children. She is really into cycling and comes to work by bike.’
Amman first attacked a woman in the shop where he stole the knife, but failed to hurt her because the blade still had its plastic packaging on.
The victim, originally from the Dominican Republic and known as Rosa, told the BBC: ‘He came in and took a knife and he looked like he was leaving the shop.
‘The owner thought he was going to stop by the cashier to pay for it.
‘But he pushed me, he tried to open and remove the plastic packaging from the knife but he didn’t manage.
‘He pushed and he stabbed me but the knife was still covered with plastic.’
A man in his 40s was also stabbed during Sunday’s incident and remains in hospital in a serious but stable condition.
‘Luckily she left daughter with us’