Susanne from Sweden: ”We heard a bang from the other side of the park”
Publicerad 2017-03-23
A Swedish woman has told of how she stood three metres away as the Westminster killer stabbed a policeman to death before being shot dead himself in Wednesday’s suspected terrorist attack in London.
The eyewitness, named Susanne, stepped right into the death scene, where five people including the unidentified attacker died and 40 were injured, after leaving a press conference in the Parliament.
"We were on our way out of the building and I was the first one to exit. Then we heard a bang from the other side of the park," she told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
Suddenly people started to run, turning the calm afternoon at Parliament Square into chaos.
"Someone came running towards where we stood and he stabbed a police officer,” Susanne, from Stockholm, said.
“Then they [the police] shot him. About three metres in front of me they shot him with two shots.”
Susanne said she had not initially understood what was going on. She had been looking towards where the bang had come from, which she suspected was where the attacker had crashed after ploughing through the crowd on Westminster Bridge.
“A crowd was chasing after him and police were after him. He had a knife that he used against the police,” Susanne said.
The eyewitness said she could not see what happened to the police that got stabbed. However, shortly after the attack, Scotland Yard announced that the unarmed officer, later identified as Keith Palmer, 48, had died from his wounds.
After the suspected terrorist was shot, Susanne and her group were told to return to the Parliament building, where they were kept until about six hours after the attack.
“We are many people here, we are about thousand people in here waiting for some information about what will happen,” Susanne said before they got to escape and return by bus to their accommodation.