It only took about 22 minutes between police receiving the first 999 call about a man wielding a sword in a quiet suburb of east London and him being fired at with a Taser and arrested.
But in that brief period, a 14-year-old boy was fatally stabbed, and four other people, including two police officers, were injured.
Police described the events of Tuesday morning, near Hainault tube station, as “truly horrific”. “I cannot even begin to imagine how those affected must be feeling,” said Ch Supt Stuart Bell.
The Met police were first alerted “to reports of a vehicle being driven into a house” in Thurlow Gardens just before 7am. Officers said a 36-year-old man got out of the vehicle before carrying out a series of attacks in the surrounding area with a sword, appearing to select victims at random.
The most serious of the attacks took place on Laing Close, where residents saw a man holding a sword stab a teenager, who then collapsed to the ground.
One witness told Channel 4 News that a man with a “massive sword” was on the phone to the fire brigade and asked a neighbour to share his location with the service. His van was smoking behind him.
“He stepped on the neighbour’s foot to stop her from moving and she noticed the sword behind his back. She managed to get off his footing and she moved away.
“She saw the Nigerian neighbour, a young boy about 16 years old, coming out of his house, putting his earphones in. About 10 metres away from the door she screamed to tell him the man had a sword and, as he turned around, he waved the sword and it struck him.”
Another resident was looking out of her kitchen window when she saw the man stab his young victim and then raise his arms in celebration, “like yay, yay I’ve done it, sort of proud”, she said.
She said the teenage boy lived in one of the neighbouring houses and that his family gathered around him after the attack. Police officers arrived quickly on the scene, she added.
Another resident of Laing Close said she saw the man brandishing a sword in front of two unarmed police officers and an ambulance. “Then [the police] sprayed him and he ran away,” she said. “He was shouting at the police: ‘Do you believe in God?’”
Julia Pisarenko, 39, who also lives on Laing Close, said: “I saw police officers and they were screaming to him: ‘Move back, move back’. I saw this guy with a knife run close to his van, a grey colour. Then he turned around and started going to a main road. I heard police calling to him like: ‘Move back, lay down’.”
Pisarenko said she saw teams of paramedics working on the teenager, and treating a man whose hand had been injured by the perpetrator.
A video shared by Pisarenko’s neighbour showed a man in a yellow shirt holding a sword in a standoff with police on the corner of Laing Close, before running away.
Another witness said they heard shrieking before seeing a man dressed in yellow jumping over some fences at about 7am. “Then he went down an alley like he was going back on to the street again. I saw a policeman and policewoman – normal coppers with the short-sleeved shirts – who chased after him and they were shouting for him to put it down.”
A video on social media showed the man standing on top of a garage, with police shouting at him to come down. A police officer is then heard saying the man had jumped into the gardens of neighbouring residents, at which point the officer shouted: “Lock your doors!”
The attacker was shot with a stun gun at a house. A neighbour said: “He was subdued there for half an hour. I think he mentioned something about God.”
The police later confirmed that a 14-year-old boy had died from his injuries after being taken to hospital. The two injured members of the public were still in hospital, and the injuries sustained by the two police officers were “significant” and would require surgery, they said.
