 "Paramedics medical equipment is pictured inside a police cordon outside Huntingdon Station in Huntingdon, eastern England, following a stabbing on a train. AFP")
It was terror on the tracks.
The United Kingdom is in shock after a mass stabbing incident took place on a train travelling from Doncaster to London on Saturday (November 1) night. Eleven people received treatment in hospital following the attack with one train staff member battling for his life.
Two men were initially arrested but, by Sunday evening, one of them had been released without charge.
But what exactly happened on the train? Who is behind the stabbings? Here’s all that we know so far.
How did the stabbing incident unfold?
On Saturday, the police were alerted to an emergency on board a train between Doncaster, a town in northeast England, and London’s King’s Cross Station, a typically busy route.
According to passengers on board the train, it all began at 6.25 pm local time when a person, brandishing a knife, began to stab people on board after it passed through Peterborough in Cambridgeshire. The British Transport Police say they were called to reports of multiple stabbings at 7.42 pm after passengers pulled the emergency alarms.
The train driver made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon station in Cambridgeshire — 15 minutes from Peterborough — allowing armed police to board the train and arrest two men and recover a knife from the scene.
Officials praised the train driver — identified as Andrew Johnson, a former Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy — for contacting the control room from his cab to get the train diverted from the fast track to the slow track when the alarm was raised.
A report by The Telegraph says that Johnson served in the Royal Navy for 17 years before he became a train driver and was deployed to Iraq in 2003 during the second Gulf War.
As Nigel Roebuck, full-time organiser in the north-east of England for the train drivers’ union Aslef, told Sky News: “The driver did everything he was trained to do, at the right time and in the right way. He brought the train into a station where passengers could disembark safely and where police, fire and rescue, and ambulance crew could get on to the train and attend to the victims and, we believe, catch the culprit.
“He showed real courage, real dedication, and real determination in the most difficult of circumstances.”
A total of 11 people were taken to hospital following the attack, of which five have been treated and discharged so far. One victim, a member of the rail staff who tried to stop the attacker, remained in a life-threatening condition late on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the National Rail said the station would remain closed until the end of the day on Monday.
What do eyewitnesses say about the attack?
For passengers on board the train, it was complete panic and horror. One such passenger, identified as Gavin, told Sky News that there were “extremely bloodied” people and police shouting “get down, get down!”
Another witness, Olly Foster, told the BBC that he heard people shouting “run, run, there’s a guy literally stabbing everyone” and initially thought it was a Halloween-related prank. But passengers then started pushing through the carriage, Foster said, adding that his hand was “covered in blood” from stains on a chair he had been leaning on.
Foster said he saw an older man block the assailant from stabbing a younger girl, adding the attack “felt like forever” though it lasted only minutes.
Another witness told The Times there was “blood everywhere” as people hid in the washrooms.
Forty-eight-year-old Dayna Arnold told The Telegraph that she saw the attacker coming at her with the knife. “I said, ‘please, please don’t’. Then something changed in his eyes and he said, ‘the devil’s not going to win’,” she said.
Who’s the suspect in the train stabbing?
After the train stopped at Huntingdon, a man dressed in black, brandishing a huge kitchen knife, was seen walking down the platform. He was later seen shouting “kill me, kill me” as he was tasered and wrestled to the ground by armed police officers.
Video footage taken by a taxi driver who was waiting to pick up a passenger near the front of the station in Cambridgeshire shows the man being electrocuted as five armed cops tackle him to the ground. The footage also shows the officers shouting ‘give me your f***ing hands’ as they try to put him in handcuffs.
While the man’s identity hasn’t been revealed so far, he is reported to be a black British national and is 32-year-old. “He is from Peterborough and it is known that he boarded the train at Peterborough station,” in eastern England, the police added in their late Sunday update.
Superintendent John Loveless from the British Transport Police said that the attack’s motive was still being probed, but added that “at this stage, there is nothing to suggest this is a terrorist incident”.
Interestingly, the authorities had made another arrest too — a 35-year-old from London. However, he was later released with no further action.
What have the reactions been to the stabbings?
Britain’s King Charles said he was “truly appalled and shocked to hear of the dreadful knife attack”, adding: “Our deepest sympathy and thoughts are with all those affected, and their loved ones.”
Meanwhile, Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer paid tribute to the “exceptional bravery” of staff and passengers on the train as well as the “utmost professionalism” of the emergency services, whose actions he said had “saved lives”.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she was “horrified” by the attack, saying: “I can only imagine how frightening it must have been to be in an enclosed environment with someone rampaging in that fashion.” She further urged people not to speculate about the incident, while questioning why “we’re seeing more and more violence on our streets” despite efforts to tackle knife crime.
Moreover, a source from the government was quoted as telling the media that there will be a “surge” of extra policing, including on trains, with officers stationed “across as much of the network” as possible today and tomorrow at least. “They usually focus on stations, but it is important to reassure passengers.”
With inputs from agencies