With a WhatsApp
the paving stones, passers-by ran to his aid, the first of the day’s many heroes.
Melissa Cochran, 46, had also been hit by Ajao’s car and suffered injuries including a broken leg and rib. She appeared to have been thrown to one side, hitting a postcard stand on the corner of the bridge and the riverbank.
A photograph of her lying on the pavement, bloodied postcards scattered around her as she stared, terrified, into a camera lens while a woman in a long grey coat knelt and held her head, would become one of the most haunting images of the day.
Ajao was only just beginning two minutes of carnage. Pressing the accelerator hard down and staying on the pavement, he drove at murderous speed, as CCTV footage later showed.
As well as Britons, the pedestrians skittled by his car included four South Koreans, three French children, two Romanians, two Greeks and one each from Germany, Poland, Ireland, Italy, China and America. Three of them were police officers on their way back from a bravery award ceremony.
Pc Kris Aves, 35, who had been honoured for his “exceptional” work as a family liaison officer, suffered “lifechanging injuries” that later required eight hours of surgery.
Speaking from his bedside, Pc Aves’ family said he had been “full of pride”. His colleague Pc Roger Smith, aged in his early 50s, also suffered leg injuries that required surgery, while Pc Bradley Bryant escaped with minor injuries.
A group of French schoolchildren from Lycée Saint-Joseph de Concarneau in Brittany were on a school trip to London when Ajao’s car bore down on them. One of them, called Thomas, suffered a head injury and fractured legs. The children, aged 15 to 16, were all later taken to hospital. Thomas’s mother said: “My husband and I thought he was dead. After an hour we were told he was injured. It felt like an extremely long time.”
Travis Frain, fresh from watching Prime Minister’s Questions, was walking across Westminster Bridge when he was hit and went over the bonnet of the Hyundai. Despite suffering a fractured leg, fractured left arm, two broken fingers and flesh wounds, he still managed to call his mother Angela as he lay in pain to say: “Mum I’m safe.” Francisco Lopes, 26, from Portugal, suffered leg and hand injuries when he was hit by the car. He said: “He started to move towards the pavement and started to just take out the people that were in front of the car, so, when I realised this, the car was literally just about one metre away, so I had no time to get out of the way.” Further along the bridge, Mrs Frade was about to become the second person to lose their life. She was hit by Ajao’s car and thrown under the wheels of a bus, dying at the scene. Around 100 yards further along the bridge, Ajao’s speeding car closed in on Romanian architect Andreea Cristea and her fiancé Andrei Burnaz. They were in London to celebrate Mr Burnaz’s 33rd birthday and to buy a wedding dress. Mr Burnaz’s foot was crushed by the car and his 29-year-old girlfriend was badly injured as the vehicle forced her over the side of ‘He started to just take out the people in front of the car… when I realised this, the car was about one metre away’ the bridge into the River Thames 30ft below.
Mr Burnaz screamed down to boats below for someone to save her, and as Miss Cristea bobbed to the surface, face down and apparently unconscious, the captain of a pleasure boat tried to pull her onboard with a boat hook after she passed under the bridge.
The crew of the City Cruises boat were unable to get her out of the water, but stopped the boat and held her fast to the side to stop her being swept downstream until a nearby fire service boat which was on an exercise pulled up alongside and rescued her.
Next to be hit was a group of South Korean tourists, four of whom are still in hospital, then a man dressed in a business suit who was pictured lying on the pavement with one shoe off, blood pooling around his ankle.
Elsewhere on the bridge, pest controller Keith Chapman, 61, was on his way to carry out some work at St Thomas’s Hospital when he was thrown up in the air and his leg “smashed to pieces”.
Another of those hit was retired window cleaner Leslie Rhodes, 75, from Streatham, south London, described as a “lovely man who would do anything