‘Incredible bravery’ of train crew and passengers saved lives
9 minutes agoRachael Mcmenemy
Andrew Johnson/FacebookA train driver, crew member and passengers have been praised for their heroic actions during a mass stabbing on an LNER train which left 11 people injured.
Witnesses have described seeing fellow passengers attempt to protect each other, while others stemmed bleeding from wounds while they waited for help.
A train crew member, who is in a critical but stable condition in hospital, has been hailed a “hero” whose actions saved lives, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said.
Police met the Doncaster-London King’s Cross train as it made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire shortly before 20:00 GMT on Saturday.
Anthony Williams, 32, from Peterborough was charged on Monday with 10 counts of attempted murder.
Crew members saved lives
Ms Alexander praised the “incredible bravery” of onboard staff, the train driver and some passengers.
She called the crew member who was hospitalised a “hero”.
“He put himself in harm’s way and there are people who are alive today who wouldn’t be alive had it not been for his actions,” she said.
She told Sky News: “He went into work that morning to work on that train service, to serve passengers and he put himself in harm’s way.
“He went in to do his job and he left work a hero.”
The driver of the train, who has since been identified as Andrew Johnson – a former Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy – contacted the control room from his cab to get the train diverted from the fast track to the slow track when the alarm was raised.
It meant the train could stop at a platform in Huntingdon, which allowed emergency services to get to the train as quickly as possible.
Whiskey bottle
Olly Foster, a passenger on the train, told the BBC he initially heard people shouting “run, run, there’s a guy literally stabbing everyone”, and believed it might have been a Halloween related prank.
He said within minutes, people started pushing through the carriage, and he noticed his hand was “covered in blood” as there was “blood all over the chair” he had leaned on.
An older man “blocked” the attacker from stabbing a younger girl, leaving him with a gash on his head and neck, Mr Foster said.
Passengers around him used jackets to try to staunch the bleeding.
He added that the only thing people in his carriage could use against the attacker was a bottle of whiskey, leaving them “staring down the carriage” and “praying” that he would not enter the carriage.
Although it lasted 10-15 minutes in total, Mr Foster says the incident “felt like forever”.
Describing the scene when he got off the train, he said: “There were three people bleeding severely. One guy was holding his stomach and there’s blood coming from his stomach and going down his leg.
“He was going ‘help, help, I’ve been stabbed’.”
‘You need to run’
PAJoe, who was also travelling back from the Nottingham Forest v Manchester United match, said the scenes were “like something out of a movie”.
The 24-year-old, from Peckham in south-east London, said: “I was texting my friends about my plans for that night and then people came rushing through from the carriage, running through, saying, ‘You need to run, you need to run’.
“At first it didn’t really register what was going on.
“And then quickly, I just dropped my stuff and I started running along with them.
“And then I looked back, and I could see this guy – he was quite a tall, black male, and he had a bloodied knife.
“You just looked around and there was blood just everywhere.”
‘What if we run out of carriages?’
Joe continued: “We kept moving through the train. We could see him behind us coming through.
“The scariest thing was that I knew that because the stops at this stage of the journey are just Stevenage and King’s Cross there’s quite a lot of big distances between stops.
“So we had no idea how long we were going to be on the train for.
“The thing that was in my mind was we’re running through this train now but what if we run out of carriages to run through? What if we reach the end of the train? What happens there?
“It all happened very quickly. I was just in a fight or flight mode really.”
‘Panic’
Steve was on the King’s Cross-bound train with his two children. The family were at the opposite end of the train to where the attack unfolded, but reflected on a “nightmare scenario”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4, he said: “We got on it [the train] about 19:10. We had just departed Peterborough, and then kind of an alarm went off, a kind of a soft alarm went off, which I heard before on the train.
“It said that, you know, an activation alarm has been activated in coach J.
“I didn’t know what it was, but then we suddenly started seeing people massing at the end of the carriage by the door… I wasn’t really sure what was going on.
“And then people started to get panicky.
“Someone said, there’s been a stabbing. And then people started to move quite quickly down towards our carriage.”
.He continued: “A woman came over the tannoy and said, ‘we are aware there is an incident. Just keep yourself safe’, which was scary to hear, because you didn’t know what was going on.
“Then we pulled into a station. I think everybody assumed it was Stevenage, because that was the next scheduled stop.
“Everyone just started to kind of run and then pile off the train, and then everyone just, there’s a bit of a panic, and everyone ran through the station forecourt.
“We ran out into the car park and ran up a hill and kind of out on to the road, and then we bumped into two or three young girls.
“We ran to someone’s house, and we hammered on all the doors and pressed the buzzers, and we got in, and some very kind, early-elderly couple looked after us until it was safe to leave.
“The kids are very shaken up by it, but dealing with it very well.”
Joe Giddens/PA
PA MediaThe train’s only other scheduled stop before King’s Cross was due to be at Stevenage.
Wren Chambers, who was due to get off in the Hertfordshire town, said they first became aware something was wrong when a man bolted down the carriage with a bloody arm, saying “they’ve got a knife, run”.
Wren said they and a friend ran to the front of the train and saw a man who had collapsed on the floor.
Wren said they felt “stressed and pretty scared” once they knew what was happening, but they were eventually able to get off the train unharmed.
“There was quite a lot of blood on the train, there was some on my bag, some on my jeans,” she told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“As soon as the train stopped and people got off most of them ran outside trying to get away from it, because we knew the attacker was still inside on the train.”
London Underground worker Dean McFarlane told the BBC that he saw the train pull into Huntingdon railway station at 20:00 with a passenger bleeding.
He said that on arrival, he saw multiple people running down the platform bleeding, with one man in a white shirt “completely covered in blood”.
He said he grabbed people and told them to leave the station, and tried to assist passengers who he believed were having panic attacks.
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