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Attacks in London: STOCKWELL: A Man Chased By Police Ran on to a Train. Five Shots Later, He Was Dead

Posted on: Saturday, 23 July 2005, 06:00 CDT

By London commuter standards, the northbound Northern line train sitting at Stockwell station in south London shortly after 10am yesterday was relatively empty. All the seats were occupied but no one was standing. After the events of the past two weeks, people were understandably tense.

The train, bound for High Barnet, was being held on the platform. The Tube system had been disrupted by false alarms and the delay to their train was not making things any easier for passengers, but at least the doors were open.

Zane Growns, 27, was above-ground, standing outside Stockwell station on Clapham Road. What followed was ' like a chase in a cop film', he said. What he saw was up to 20 police officers running past him into the station below. They were carrying machine guns and handguns.

The security presence had been stepped up dramatically overnight in this tough part of inner-city south London, after the discovery of a black sweatshirt bearing the legend New York, just half a mile to the east of Stockwell in Cowley Road. The top had been worn by the man police believed had tried to bomb a Northern line train at the Oval on Thursday.

A witness in a block of local authority flats opposite the station said plainclothes police had challenged a man wearing a blue fleece who promptly fled, leaping over the ticket barriers and down towards the concourse below. Police said later he had been challenged and 'refused to obey' their commands.

Clapham Road is one of the busiest in London, feeding traffic through to Oval and Vauxhall before it crosses the bridges into central London. As usual, there was gridlock. The traffic lights were on green but the vehicles were snarled up, bumper to bumper outside the Tube station. Steven Jones was caught in the jam. What he saw gave him serious cause for concern.

'A plainclothes policeman ran across the front of the car, armed, and into the station,' he said. 'Another car parked up on the kerb outside the station and three or four officers ran out. On the other side four or five ran in, all armed. There was no dawdling, there was no ambling or jogging, they were properly sprinting into the station. They were following someone or pursuing someone. There was no messing around.'

Sitting on the stationary train below was Mark Whitby, a 47-year- old water installation engineer en route to meet his boss at London Bridge. He was travelling north on one of the front carriages of the train from his home in Brixton. It was his usual journey into work. Unbeknown to him, the man the police were chasing was about to burst into his morning routine, with horrifying consequences.

'I heard a lot of shouting, 'Get down, get out'. I saw a chap run on to the train, an Asian guy. He was running so fast he sort of tripped,' said Mr Whitby, still shaking from what he had witnessed just five yards from where he sat. 'He was being pursued by three guys. They were plainclothes policemen. One had a black handgun. As he went down, two of them dropped on to him to hold him down. The other one fired; I heard five shots. I can't tell where they shot him " he was surrounded " possibly to the head.'

Mr Whitby struggled to find the words to describe the horrific scenes he had seen unfold before him 'within a matter of seconds'. It was 'surreal' and 'indiscriminate', he suggested. 'Complete and utter panic' broke out. 'People were running for their lives.' They were 'cowering with their arms above their heads,' he said.

The dead man had not been carrying anything, he believed. 'I'd put him in his mid- to late-20s. Quite a chubby build. He had a baseball cap on and a thick padded jacket which I thought was unusual for this time of year. I saw his face for a split second and he looked absolutely horrified. He was like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified.'

The exact sequence of events remain confused. One witness, Dan Copeland, said he believed the man trying to escape the police had grabbed a passenger before being shot. Another witness, Anthony Larkin, said he saw a 'bomb belt' with 'wires coming out'.

As Mr Whitby helped usher an elderly woman passenger past the on- rushing police, Georgia Law was on one of the rear carriages of the train. 'I heard all these popping sounds that sounded like gunshot but quite quiet. I could hear shouting, 'Get down' and people shouting, 'Run, run'. I thought there was just someone shooting randomly. So I lay on the floor of the carriage. Then I decided to get up and have a look out. I could see someone lying on the floor and police standing all around. It was all quite panicky. I didn't really know what was happening because there was just all this noise and gunshot rounds. I suddenly thought, 'Oh my God, I can't believe it is happening again'. I was quite calm first of all until I got up and saw someone lying on the floor. I thought I had just got to run and if I get shot, I get shot. I didn't realise that it was the police shooting.'

Jo Parkes, 30, from south London, was changing from the Victoria line to the Northern line. Like many, she had been taken to the station because of the problems up the line at Vauxhall. She saw people starting to file out because of what she thought was a 'disturbance'.

But she found herself being shepherded by the crowd towards the shooting scene. Heading back to where she had come from she saw frightened passengers hammering on the doors of the train. 'The doors opened and some people were so shocked they lay on the floor between the seats. Some people were crying and some were comforting each other. The driver shouted several times, 'Stay on the train, stay on the train, get back on the train',' she said.

Within 15 minutes of the shooting, the area above ground was surrounded by the police. Down below, the normally busy platforms had become a crime scene. The witnesses were being interviewed and the surrounding streets cordoned off. The scale and speed of the response astonished onlookers.

Duarte Osty, 26, was driving the P5 bus, arriving at the station moments after police dashed inside. 'People were running out of the Tube station, crying and shouting. The police were going straight into the station. Within two minutes there were 20 cars and a helicopter overhead. They put the security in place so quickly it was like they knew something was going to happen.'

Later, forensic officers began their work underground. Elsewhere in London, police began raiding addresses. Police Commissioner Ian Blair said the shooting was 'directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti- terrorist operation'. But the shot man has not been identified as the person who tried to bomb the train at Oval on Thursday.

Source: Independent, The; London (UK)

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