Mother of Westminster terror attacker Khalid Masood feared he would kill years before atrocity, inquest hears

The mother of Westminster terrorist Khalid Masood feared her son would “kill someone through fighting” when he was a teenager, an inquest has heard.

Masood’s violent and criminal past was laid out during an inquest into the deaths of the victims killed in the March 2017 atrocity at the Old Bailey on Wednesday.

The court heard Masood first got into trouble with police for shoplifting when he was a 14-year-old schoolboy in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, while he lived with his mother, stepfather and two stepbrothers.

Counter-terror officer Detective Chief Inspector Dan Brown said: "His mother suggested he exhibited normal boisterous behaviour, but his two brothers suggested he was a violent, disruptive person, who would not back down from a disagreement."

Masood's mother, Janet Ajao, also told police he would go out to pubs and clubs looking for a fight as an older teenager, while at Tunbrige College, where he did a business studies course.

"She also described him as an angry person," said DCI Brown.

"She was worried he would kill someone through fighting."

John Hough QC, counsel for the inquest, described a "number of incidents of significant violence escalating in seriousness and apparently becoming more regular".

These included spitting and punching in the face of a woman in 1998, after he accused her of disliking him for being black though she said his attitude was the problem, and later being charged with causing actual bodily harm to a girlfriend and intimidating a witness, for which he was fined.

He was first jailed in July 2000, put behind bars for two years for wounding, after spitting at another customer in a pub and attacking one of the men who subsequently ejected him, with a knife.

During this spell inside he began reading the Koran, though showed no signs of extremist beliefs.

His relationship with the mother of two of his children deteriorated at this time amidst "ongoing domestic abuse".

In 2002 it was alleged he glassed a man at a pub and cut another’s face with a knife and the following spring battered a man with a baton, though the case was dropped as witnesses would not help investigators, with concerns Masood intimidated them.

The last act described to the court was in May 2003, when Masood plunged a carving knife in to the face, of Daniel Smith, cutting through his nose, mouth and into his jaw, after he had suggested Masood was an undercover policeman.

Masood claimed self-defence and was acquitted of attempted murder, wounding with intent and having a bladed weapon and was released from West Sussex's Lewes prison, where he had been held on remand, in December 2003.

This was based on time served having been convicted of another weapons offence.

The inquest heard he credited his acquittal as well as the survival of his eldest daughter, who was later involved in a serious car accident, as the "miracles" that reinforced his Muslim faith.

Masood was shot dead on March 22, 2017, by police after stabbing Pc Keith Palmer, 48, and ploughing into Kurt Cochran, 54, Leslie Rhodes, 75, Aysha Frade, 44, and Andreea Cristea, 31, on Westminster Bridge in a rented 4x4.

All of those named died from their injuries in the tragedy.

An inquest is being held at the Old Bailey into the death of the victims and will then move on to that of Masood himself.