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I saw Tube man shot - eyewitness
A passenger has told how he saw armed police officers shoot a man dead on a Tube train at Stockwell. Mark Whitby said: "I was sitting on the train... I heard a load of noise, people saying, 'Get out, get down'. I saw an Asian guy. He ran on to the train, he was hotly pursued by three plain clothes officers, one of them was wielding a black handgun. He half tripped... they pushed him to the floor and basically unloaded five shots into him," he told BBC News 24.
"Take that, sucker!"
"**They didn't tell us about this part back in jihad school... Ow!... Rosebud!" |
"As [the suspect] got onto the train I looked at his face, he looked sort of left and right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, a cornered fox.
| [Huffa puffa! Huffa puffa!] "**Gotta get away! Gotta explode!**" |
"He looked absolutely petrified and then he sort of tripped, but they were hotly pursuing him, [they] couldn't have been any more than two or three feet behind him at this time and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand. He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him.
| Bet that hurt, briefly... |
"He [the suspect] had a baseball cap on and quite a sort of thickish coat - it was a coat you'd wear in winter, sort of like a padded jacket. He might have had something concealed under there, I don't know.
| "Didn't want to find out, either..." |
"But it looked sort of out of place with the sort of weather we've been having, the sort of hot humid weather. | Bingo! Thats one of the things you're told to look for, heavy coat in hot weather that might conceal a bomb vest. |
"He was largely built, he was quite a chubby sort of guy. I didn't see any guns or anything like that - I didn't see him carrying anything. I didn't even see a bag to be quite honest.
| "There was only the fuse between his shoulder blades..." |
"I got into the ticket hall. I was approached by a policeman and London Underground staff asking me if I needed counselling. I was just basically saying I've just seen a man shot dead. I've seen a man shot dead. I was distraught, totally distraught. It was no less than five yards away from where I was sitting. I actually saw it with my own eyes."
| Cheeze. Give him some counselling, why don'tcha? |
Another passenger on the train, Georgia Law, told BBC Radio 5 Live she heard the shots. "I heard all these popping sounds, it sounded like gunshots, but quite quiet ones. I could hear shouting, 'get down' and people going 'run, run'. I thought there was just someone shooting randomly. So I lay on the floor of the carriage and then I decided to get up and have a look out. [I] could see someone lying on the floor and police all standing around. But it was all quite panicky so I then ran up the platform and out of the Tube."
Commuter Anthony Larkin, who was also on the train at Stockwell station, told 5 Live he saw police chasing a man. "I saw these police officers in uniform and out of uniform shouting 'get down, get down', and I saw this guy who appeared to have a bomb belt and wires coming out and people were panicking and I heard two shots being fired."
Jason Dines was a passenger on a Victoria line tube train which arrived at Stockwell station as the shooting was taking place. "When we pulled into Stockwell there was just a lot of panic on the platform," he told News 24. "Everyone who was on the platform was just running from one end of the platform down to the exit as quickly as possible. There was a real wave of panic on my train, people were banging on the doors saying, you know, 'come on, open the doors, let us get off, we want to get off the train'. Because of that panic, you couldn't actually hear what the driver's announcements were, what he was telling us to do which was a bit of a problem. The doors opened, we got onto the platform, then you could hear the PA address system on the platform - the drivers were basically saying get back on the train. There were people very, very shaken, a couple of people crying. It was quite an unsettling experience."
Posted by: Steve 2005-07-22 |
