London Bridge inquest: victim swung skateboard at attackers

A victim of the London Bridge attack swung his skateboard at the attackers to try to protect others, an inquest has heard.

Ignacio Echeverría, 39, ran towards Rachid Redouane “swinging his skateboard” after he had seen a woman being stabbed on Borough High Street.

Echeverría was one of the eight people killed on 3 June 2017 by Redouane, Youssef Zaghba and Khuram Bhutt.

“He didn’t even think about it,” his friend Guillermo Sanchez-Montisi, who saw “one of the attackers covering his head as Ignacio was hitting him”, told the Old Bailey.

The Spanish national had been cycling with Sanchez-Montisi and another friend through the area, after a day of skating in the South Bank, when they saw a man with a stab wound staggering away from London Bridge.

They then saw a police officer “hit in the neck” before falling towards the floor as he tried to protect Marie Bondeville and Oliver Dowling from the attackers close to Lobos Meat and Tapas restaurant.

In CCTV footage shown to the court, Echeverría could then be seen alighting from his bike and rushing to help.

The banker fell to the ground as Redouane made a “stabbing motion” towards him. Redouane and Zaghba then attacked him as he lay on the ground.

“From the way that they were attacking people, it was clear that their intentions were to kill everyone,” said Sanchez-Montisi at the inquest into the deaths of the attack’s victims.

He added that the attackers looked “prepared” and “professional”.

In a statement, Sanchez-Montisi said that after the attackers had finished with Echeverría, one of them turned towards him. “I didn’t know if I should stay or go,” he said, “I didn’t know if I was going to be next.”

Sanchez-Montisi then threw something in the attacker’s path and ran with his Santander hire cycle “as fast as I could” toward London Bridge.

“Everyone was running. I didn’t know what to do because if I stayed, I would have been stabbed too.”

He added that having to leave his friend was something he would “never get over” and said that he would not wish the feeling of “not being able to do anything on anyone, not even my worst enemy”.

Echeverría had moved to London about a year before the attack, to be closer to his sister and nephew. He had been living in Poplar and worked for HSBC as a financial crime compliance analyst.

Earlier in the evening, he had stopped to buy a blackboard for his nephew, which had been in the basket of the bike.

Dr Jonathan Moses, who had been dining with a friend at Lobos at the time of the attack, broke down in the witness box as he gave evidence. After hearing a commotion outside, he ran to the restaurant’s entrance where the manager, Jaume Planas Lopez, tried to keep him inside to protect him.

“I said: ‘I can’t watch them die. You have to let me out, just lock the door after,’” said Moses.

The recently-qualified doctor said he went outside to help and found a man and woman lying on the ground, Bondeville and Echeverría.

He said he told Bondeville he was a doctor, held her hand and said: “You are not going to die. I’m going to save you.”

After assisting her for five minutes he directed his attention to Echeverría, who had been receiving chest compressions from another member of the public.

Moses continued performing CPR on Echeverría as he and others carried him to the north side of London Bridge, where paramedics were stationed. Despite their efforts, he died of cardiac arrest.

Moses, who described his “methodical approach” on the night, then gave medical assistance to other victims, including Dowling and a woman who had been hit by the attacker’s van.

The inquest has already heard evidence into victims Xavier Thomas, Chrissy Archibald, Sara Zelenak, James McMullan, Sebastian Belanger, Alexandre Pigeard and Kirsty Boden.

The inquest continues.