London-stab terror nixed
Police found no evidence of terrorism or radicalization by a teen who fatally stabbed a Florida woman and wounded five other people in London’s Russell Square, police said Thursday.
Zakaria Bulhan, a 19-yearold Norway native of Somali descent, went on a knife rampage Wednesday night through the tourist hub, sparking fears of another ISISrelated attack in Europe, officials said.
Darlene Horton (inset), 64, of Tallahassee was killed a day before she and her husband, Richard Wagner, a psychology professor at Florida State University, were expected to return to the United States, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
He taught in the summer session at FSU’s London Study Program, the school said in a statement.
Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, London’s top police counterterrorism official, said, “All of the work that we have done so far increasingly points to this tragic incident as having been triggered by mentalhealth issues.”
Cops used a stun gun to subdue Bulhan, who emi- grated from Norway in 2002.
The wounded victims were an American, two Australians, an Israeli teenage girl and a British man.
Horton was repeatedly stabbed in the back before she was helped by a family of Spanish tourists, the Telegraph of the UK reported.
A witness said he tried to console her before she died at the scene.
“The victim said something about: ‘He’s still here! He’s still here!’ After that, she was not lucid. That’s when I saw someone. He was meandering about. He was very disturbed,” the witness told The Daily Mail.
The wounded Israeli was identified as Yuval Levkovsky, 18, who was visiting London before enlisting in the army.
She said she was walking with her grandfather when she heard screams.
“My Israeli instincts started to kick in,” she told Israeli Army Radio, recalling she saw two men running toward them. “I suspected it was a terror attack and that the two were trying to escape. I went up to one of them to help and felt a pain in my arm.”
Levkovsky said the second man chased and caught the attacker.