Armed police launched a series raids in east London on Sunday as officers hunted associates of the three men who carried out the London Bridge attack. The Metropolitan police said 12 people - seven women and five men – were arrested from at least two addresses in and around Barking.
Just before 7am residents at the Elizabeth Fry block of flats, in King’s Road, near Barking station, were woken when several armed police units arrived.
Michael Mimbo, 25, had been getting ready for his shift as a security guard. “I heard cars screeching up the road and lots of shouting of ‘get down, get down’,” he said. He went outside and saw “armed police everywhere”.
“There were three people lying on the floor with guns pointed at them,” he said, adding, “it was chaos.”
Mimbo said he had seen the latter man before but did not know himHe said that in all he saw five people – four men and one woman – arrested.
Other neighbours claimed that one of the men responsible for the attack in London Bridge had lived in the ground floor flat in the block with his wife and two young children – one of whom was just a few months old.
Ken Chigbo, 26, a market analyst, said he recognised the man from pictures that emerged overnight that appeared to show one of the attackers, after he had been shot dead by the police, dressed in an Arsenal football shirt . “I saw him yesterday at about 3pm and he was wearing exactly the same clothes,” he said.
He added that he had known the man to “say hello to” for three years and occasionally played football or table tennis with him at the flats. The man had invited him to a BBQ at the flats last week. “He was very sociable, a friendly guy and the BBQ was friendly – there was a good vibe.”
Chigbo said there were often lots of men coming and going from the flat. Other neighbours said there had been reduced activity in recent weeks. Chigbo said he was devastated about what had happened and felt deeply let down, he said. He added that the man had been especially friendly when he saw him on Saturday.
“I am moving and he was very interested in that and wished me well … He was particularly interested in the van I hired, where I got it from and if it was an automatic … It’s very strange to think about that conversation considering what happened just a few hours later.”
Jibril Palomba also said he recognised the man from photographs online. He said he last saw the man three days ago when he asked whether he wanted to go swimming. “There was no strange environment, no strange talking,” Palomba said. The man had previously advised him of the need to be a faithful Muslim, he added.
Neighbours said the man often played football in the park and was friendly and outgoing. Palomba added that the man had introduced him to a gym and that they did “heavy lifting together”.
Other neighbours said the man had been ejected from a local mosque after questioning an imam during a sermon about people “using their vote wisely” in the run-up to the 2015 general election. A spokesman for the Jabir bin Zayd Islamic centre, which neighbours said was one of two mosques the suspected attacker had attended, confirmed that incident had happened but said the man involved was not a regular and was not known to them.
Peugeot 1007 used by suspect in London Bridge terror attack. Neighbour says all sorts of strange cars in area recent pic.twitter.com/6zh45qA4Jc
— lisa o'carroll (@lisaocarroll) June 4, 2017
Neighbours said the suspect drove a small red Peugeot that was still parked near his flat on Sunday. The car had a child seat in the back with two pairs of adult trainers and a receipt from Asda in the boot.
“This is definitely his car, definitely, I am amazed they haven’t taken it away,” said one neighbour who gave her name to the Guardian but asked not to be named publicly. “There was a succession of unusual cars coming and going here [recently], they kept getting tickets. There was a foreign registered BMW which was just stacking up tickets. Then in the last week the activity stopped.”
At lunchtime on Sunday there was a second raid. Police raided a flat above a Paddy Power betting shop in Barking Road, about three miles west of the Elizabeth Fry flats in East Ham. Witnesses at Sam’s Chicken Shop next door said five men were taken away.
Janushan Mathivannan, 15, who witnessed the raid, said there was one man on the roof. “They shouted at him to come down from the roof and then they went in. They had assault rifles with them.”
Mathu, an employee at Sam’s Chicken Shop, said she heard what she thought was a gunshot followed by police bursting into the shop and into the next-door flats.
She said the main tenant was Romanian. “He was about 22 or 23, he was a nice, quiet guy. He lived there with his brother and his girlfriend. They used to come in and order lunch, always ordered wings and chips.”
