Victim was committed to helping others turn life round
Former offenders gathered for rehabilitation meeting when terrorist burst in to begin murderous rampage
THEY were attacked by one of the very people they were trying to help.
By the time Usman Khan had been disarmed and bundled to the floor, before being shot dead by armed police, he had killed two people taking part in a programme for the rehabilitation of offenders.
One of his victims, 25-year-old Jack Merritt, was described by his grieving father as always having been on the side of the underdog.
Mr Merritt was an organiser for the Learning Together event at Fishmongers’ Hall aimed at making “society more inclusive and safer by reducing reoffending”. The event, of which he was a course leader, was underpinned by the belief that everyone who does wrong is capable of redemption.
It is of some comfort, then, that some of the very people who bravely tried to stop Khan and protect those he was attacking were former offenders.
David Merritt, Jack’s father, said on Twitter: “My son, Jack, who was killed in this attack, would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily. Jack spoke so highly of all the people he worked with and he loved his job.”
Mr Merritt Snr, who described himself as “an average, pragmatic Leftleaning atheist”, was critical of recent cuts in front-line police numbers and in the budget of the prison and probation services, which he said had “been decimated by cuts since 2010”.
The conference had been advertised as “a day to celebrate, connect and collaborate”. Workshops included interactive storytelling and creative writing.
Khan is thought to have launched his attack during the storytelling and creative writing session, where he had been invited to share his experience of prison. He was tackled by ex-offenders attending the conference after he started “lashing out”, it emerged last night. He had participated in Cambridge University’s Learning Together prisoner rehabilitation programme but had showed “no cause for concern”.
According to a source, all those involved in tackling Khan, with the exception of the man reported to be a Polish chef, named Lukasz, were exoffenders. They were all on day-release, or had been released on licence.
They, along with Khan, had been invited to attend the conference at Fishmongers’ Hall after having previously participated in the programme.
It is understood that Khan started
“lashing out” in a downstairs room of the hall but was grabbed by the conference-goers and bundled out of the front door as he tried to go upstairs. From here he was chased and thrown to the floor, where he was shot and killed by armed police officers.
Police said a woman was also killed in the attack, along with a dozen injured, three of which were last night being treated in hospital. Two are stable and a third has less serious injuries.
A patient at the Royal London Hospital, who did not give her name, witnessed the drama in hospital.
She said: “They are definitely here, there are three of them. There is a man in intensive care, they had to put him in an induced coma.
“Then there is a woman, in her twenties, with slash wounds on her arms and stomach. It’s just awful. There are armed police all around the ward.”
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh sent a message of sympathy to those killed and affected by the “terrible violence”, and praised the “brave individuals who put their own lives at risk to selflessly help and protect others”.
Mr Merritt spoke to the BBC in March this year about a project he was co-ordinating at Warren Hill prison in Suffolk, where inmates studied legal issues alongside law students from the University of Cambridge.
The idea was that they would be able to help each other learn by sharing their very different life experiences.
“Our students in prison often have a very first-hand, very real, but also very nuanced idea of how the law works,” said Mr Merritt. “They also have a very good sense of ... which areas of the law could do with clarification.”
‘Jack would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences’