A mother of two has
described how she confronted an armed man suspected of slaughtering a British
soldier in broad daylight in Woolwich, south London.
Ingrid Loyau-Kennett asked
him to hand over his weapon, warning him: “It is only you versus many people,
you are going to lose”.
Mrs Loyau-Kennett, 48, told
the Daily Telegraph that one of the attackers said to her that they "want
to start a war in London tonight".
The mother of two, a Cub
Scout leader from Cornwall, added: "Being a Cub leader I have my first aid
so when I saw this guy on the floor I thought it was an accident - then I saw
the guy was dead and I could not feel any pulse.
"And then when I went
up there was this black guy with a revolver and a kitchen knife, he had what
looked like butcher's tools and he had a little axe, to cut the bones, and two
large knives, and he said, 'Move off the body'.
"So I thought, 'OK, I
don't know what is going on here', and he was covered with blood. I thought I
had better start talking to him before he starts attacking somebody else. I
thought these people usually have a message so I said, 'What do you want?'
"I asked him if he did
it and he said yes, and I said, 'Why?' And he said because he has killed Muslim
people in Muslim countries, he said he was a British solider and I said,
'Really?' And he said, 'I killed him because he killed Muslims and I am fed up
with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan, they have nothing to do
there'."
Mrs Loyau-Kennett said that
the attacker seemed to be "in full control of his decisions and ready to
do everything he wanted to do".
She added: "I said,
'Right now it is only you versus many people, you are going to lose, what would
you like to do?' and he said, 'I would like to stay and fight'."
Other eyewitnesses described
seeing the "crazed" Woolwich attackers "hacking" at their
victim and posing for pictures before charging at police wielding meat
cleavers.
One onlooker, identified as
James, said he saw two black men chopping at a man in his 20s like he was
"a piece of meat".
He told LBC radio:
"They were hacking at this poor guy, literally.
"They were hacking at
him, chopping him, cutting him."
Describing the murderers as
"animals", he told how he saw them drag their victim from the
pavement into the middle of the road.
"These two guys were
crazed," he said as he fought back tears.
The witness added that they
then stood around, waving knives and a gun, asking people nearby to take
pictures of them "as if they wanted to be on TV or something".
He said they were running up
and down the road, urging people to take pictures.
"In my opinion, they
were waiting for the police to arrive to be shot by the police. That's the only
thing I can think," he said.
When armed police arrived 20
minutes later, "the man with the beanie hat, the tall guy, he charged at
the police vehicle," James said.
Another witness, Julia
Wilders, 51, who lives near the scene, said she saw one of the attackers run
towards police clutching two meat cleavers.
"He ran towards police
before they could even get out of the car, and it looked like the other one was
going to lift the gun up," she said.
"We were driving back
and my husband said to me, 'Don't look, they're resuscitating someone'. But
apparently they were stabbing him."
Her husband Graham, 50, said:
"As I drove round I saw a man lying on the floor.
"It looked like another
man was trying to resuscitate him, but then he pulled a handgun out in the
air."
He said the person with the
gun was a black man, wearing a black top, jeans and a hat.
Mr Wilders added: "I
saw a bunch of schoolkids come up. I shouted at the teachers, 'Get the kids in
school because there's someone there with a handgun'."
Mr Wilders told the BBC:
"Apparently they actually ran the car into him and knocked him down before
they did anything."
He then described how he saw
one of the men pull out a handgun.
"It was a gun that
looked as if it could take about 12, 15 rounds so I definitely know it was
handgun because I actually seen it in his hand," he said.
"He didn't fire the
gun. All I heard was four shots when the Trojan people turned up. These men
actually went for the police with the machetes, knife and handgun.
"I don't think they
cared. I don't think they really cared because they went for the police with a
handgun. The police were the only ones who did any shooting."
Witnesses also took to
Twitter to describe the dramatic events and post photographs, which quickly
spread online and on television news programmes.
One user, writing on the
account Boyadee, said he saw two men decapitate another man in front of him as
he went to a nearby shop.
He suggested that the men
looked like they were on drugs, waiting for the police to arrive and then going
towards them with "just two machete and an old rusty lookin
revolver".
"I couldn't believe my
eyes. That was some movie s**t," he wrote.
"The two black bredas
run this white guy over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off
with machete."
He then described a female
officer "taking out" one of the men "like Robocop".
Joe Tallant, 20, saw one man
holding a gun and a knife, and another holding two knives.
He described how he saw the
victim on the floor and the men asking onlookers to call the police.
He said: "I looked on
the floor and I saw a dead body and then I saw one of the men walking around
the body.
"He was telling people
to call the police and then five to seven minutes later the police came.
"They walked towards
the police car with their weapons and a police lady jumped out and shot them
both."
He added: "They (the
men) had the gun out and they were walking towards them casually with their
arms by their side.
"I think there was a
bit of twitching going on and then it all happened in a flash."
Mr Tallant also said one of
the men insisted that "only women" should approach the victim.
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