Witnesses have spoken of their terror after 11 people were injured in a mass stabbing on a London-bound train.
Dozens of travellers were forced to barricade themselves into carriages and try to shield themselves from the brutal stabbings, which took place on the 6.25pm Doncaster to London LNER service on Saturday.
The train made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon, where around 30 police officers boarded and arrested two people. Ten people were taken to hospital where one “heroic” LNER staff member remains in a life-threatening condition, according to the British Transport Police. A 32-year-old remains in custody on suspicion of attempted murder and is now being treated as the only suspect.
Hunkering down in a train carriage
When Alistair Day missed his connection back to Hertford after a day out at the football, he hopped on the 6.25pm service travelling from Doncaster to King’s Cross.
Shortly after he boarded, he visited the buffet car – then saw people running towards him in what he initially thought was a “prank”. Then, he noticed they were covered in blood, desperately seeking somewhere to hide after an alleged knifeman unleashed the attack.
Mr Day, 58, told the BBC he was one of dozens of eyewitnesses who were forced to barricade themselves inside the carriage in the eight minutes between the first 999 call and the arrests.
“I thought it was like a prank – Halloween or students,” he said. “Then they’re getting louder and louder.”
When he saw people had blood on them, he said he realised “this is not good”.
He joined a group on their way into the buffet car where people “were trying to close up the shutters”, but told them “no, you’ve got to let us in”.
He said he then saw “a man at the window with his knife” trying to get in, but by then the buffet car was already locked. He also remembers a man in a Nottingham Forest tracksuit saying: “I’m gonna go confront him.”
He said he later saw the man on the train platform, covered in blood.
‘There was blood everywhere’
Joe, 24, told the BBC he was also coming back from the football when he saw people running through his train carriage.
“You need to run, you need to run,” he was told.
“At first it didn’t really register what was going on,” he continued. “And then, quickly, I just dropped my stuff and I started running along with them.”
He added: “You just looked around and there was blood just everywhere.”
‘I leaned on a chair - my hand came away covered in blood’
Olly Foster, a passenger on the train, said he initially believed he was witnessing a Halloween prank after hearing fellow travellers shout of a stabbing.
But when people started pushing through the carriage, he realised something serious was happening. He told the BBC he leaned on a chair he hadn’t realised was soaked in blood – and came away covered in it.
He sheltered at the end of a carriage and spoke to other passengers about anything they might be able to use to counter the attacker. Between them, they had just a bottle of whiskey to fight back with, leaving them “staring down the carriage” and “praying” that he would not enter.
Mr Foster said the 10-to-15-minute encounter “felt like forever”.
When he got off the train, he saw the full extent of the horror: “There were three people bleeding severely.
“One guy was holding his stomach, and there’s blood coming from his stomach and going down his leg. He was going, ‘Help, help, I’ve been stabbed.’”
Cassie Marriot tried to help people coming off the train, including a teenage girl who looked “petrified” after narrowly missing being attacked.
She told the BBC: “I met another young girl who was about 18 or 19. She told me she was listening to music on the train when a man tried to stab her. She said someone pulled her out of the way.
“She looked absolutely petrified.”
