The coroner in the London Bridge terror attack inquest hailed the “heroic” actions of members of the public and emergency services in response to the atrocity as he began delivering his findings today.
Mark Lucraft QC will deliver his conclusions over the next two days, after 34 days of hearings into the attack on June 3, 2017, which left eight people dead and 48 injured.
Beginning his remarks, which are expected to take 14 hours to deliver, the coroner said he will pick out those who had gone to the aid of others when three Islamist extremists struck in the van and knife attack.
“Many acted with bravery in the face of the most brutal of attacks,” he said, promising to identify those who had responded “heroically” as the 10-minute atrocity unfolded.
Khuram Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, drove a van at pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people at random in a marauding knife rampage in the nearby streets around Borough Market.
Gareth Patterson QC, representing some of the victims, said his clients are “bewildered” by the investigation into Butt, a known radical, prior to the attack, and he has accused the security services and police of “inadequate investigative coverage”.
The coroner, sitting at the Old Bailey, has also been asked to consider if the failure to install security barriers on London Bridge after the Westminster Bridge attack three months earlier constitutes a breach of the European Convention of Human Rights.
Christine Archibald, 30, Xavier Thomas, 45, Alexandre Pigeard, 26, Sara Zelenak, 21, Kirsty Boden, 28, Sebastien Belanger, 36, James McMullan, 32, and Ignacio Echeverria, 39, were killed in the London Bridge attack.
The hearing continues.
