'I saw it all. He was dead, five shots'

'I looked at his face ... He was absolutely petrified'

James Burleigh and Ben Fenton
The Daily Telegraph
Saturday, July 23, 2005

LONDON - The events that led to the shooting of a man on a Northern Line Tube train yesterday began around 10 a.m.

The man, who several witnesses said was wearing an unseasonably warm overcoat or jacket, was walking toward Stockwell Tube station.

It is thought police had been following him for some time, perhaps from an address where he had been staying overnight. Sources said the man was not the one who fled from Oval station, a few hundred metres up the road, after his backpack bomb failed to detonate on Thursday.

One witness suggested that as the man neared Stockwell station, he realized he was being followed, but it is equally likely police decided they could not take the risk of allowing a suspected suicide bomber back on to the underground network.

In any case, the pace of events accelerated from this point. Chris Wells, a 28-year-old company manager, said he saw about 20 police, some of them armed, rushing into the station.

"They were carrying big black guns. The next thing I saw was this guy jump over the barriers and the police officers were chasing after him and everyone was just shouting 'get out, get out.' "

The fugitive ran down the escalator to the Northern Line, the deeper of two lines that run through Stockwell. There he tried to get on a train that was waiting at the platform.

One of the passengers, Mark Whitby, 47, said, "I heard people shouting, 'Get down, get down.' An Asian guy ran on to the train and I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit -- he was absolutely petrified."

He added: "The man half tripped and was then pushed to the floor by three plain-clothes police officers who were pursuing him.

"One of the police officers was holding a black automatic pistol in his left hand. He held it down to him and unloaded five shots into him.

"I saw it all. He was dead, five shots. I was literally less than five yards away."

After the shooting, Mr. Whitby threw himself to the ground.

"I was crouched down and worried about bullets flying around. The other passengers were distraught. It was just mayhem.

"People were desperate to get off the Tube. There were people running in all directions, looks of horror on their faces, a lot of screaming from women. There was also a noticeable smell of cordite, that acrid sort of gunpowder smell.' "

Another passenger, Jason Dines, was on a train stopped at a platform opposite the shooting when he saw "all hell break loose."

"I saw from the window there was suddenly a contagious wave of panic sweeping across the platform. It was not constructive.

"People were trying to get out. We hadn't heard anything and didn't know what was happening. Suddenly everyone on my train started banging on the windows trying to get out of the carriages and get out of the station.

"People were screaming for them to open the doors but they wouldn't. Then suddenly they did and all hell broke loose and people were running everywhere."

Outside, Duarte Osty, the 26-year-old driver of the P5 bus, was just approaching the station when he suddenly saw hundreds of people running out of the building.

"I must have arrived just seconds after the shooting," Mr. Osty said. "I saw police rushing straight into the station and I was asked to stop my bus. Within two minutes at least 20 police cars had arrived at the scene and a helicopter was circling overhead.

"It seemed as though they were expecting something to happen the way they came so fast."

Terror in London

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=af75b20e-7118-4e05-b105-2d65bfa5251c