Nottingham attacks: Eyewitness describes 'blood-curdling screams' as shocking incidents unfolded

Eyewitnesses have described how a major incident that left three people dead and three more injured in Nottingham unfolded.

One eyewitness, speaking to the BBC, said he heard “awful, blood-curdling screams” as the first attack unfolded on Ilkeston Road, Radford. He said he saw a young man and young woman being repeatedly stabbed.

Another told how she saw a van mount the curb and hit two people in the city centre after a police car appeared behind the driver.

What happened?

Police were called to Ilkeston Road just after 4am on Tuesday morning where they found two people dead in the street.

They were then called to Milton Street where a van had tried to run over three people – who are now in hospital – near Nottingham's Theatre Royal.

Another man was also found dead in Magdala Road, north of the city centre, prompting widespread road closures.

Police have arrested a 31-year-old man on suspicion of murder.

Investigators believe all three incidents are linked but they are yet to establish a motive behind the "horrific and tragic incident".

Nottingham attack live: Follow the latest updates after three killed in city centre

'She was screaming'

One eyewitness to the first incident in Ilkeston Road, who did not give his name, told the BBC he heard “awful, blood-curdling screams” and looked out his window to see a “guy dressed all in black with a hood and rucksack grappling with some people”.

He added: “She was screaming ‘Help!’ I just wish I’d shouted something out of the window to unnerve the assailant.

“I saw him stab the lad first and then the woman. It was repeated stabbing – four or five times. The lad collapsed in the middle of the road.

“The girl stumbled towards a house and didn’t move. The next minute she had disappeared down the side of a house, and that’s where they found her.

“I’d say it all happened within five or six minutes. The attacker then just walked off up Ilkeston Road towards town, as calm as anything.”

The man said he called the police who arrived within five minutes, before paramedics tried to revive the pair for 40 minutes.

'I can't believe he got up'

Another eyewitness, Lynn Haggitt, described the incident that is believed to have happened soon after, in which a van mounted a curb on Milton Street and ran over a number of people.

Lynn Haggitt told BBC News she was feeling “shaky” after describing what she saw near the Theatre Royal.

Describing how a man in a white van pulled up beside her at 5.30am on her way to work, she said: “He looked in his mirror, saw a police car behind him, he then quickened up, there were two people, two in the corner, he went straight into these two people.

“The woman went on the kerb, the man went up in the air, there was such a bang, I wish I never saw it, it’s really shaken me up.

“I went over, he (the van driver) backed up after he hit… and drove up Parliament Street.

She added: “The woman was sitting up on the kerb, she looked OK. The man was laying down, but then he got up, sat on the side waiting for an ambulance. I can’t believe he was able to get up after the head wound."

In a separate interview, she told Channel 4 News: “I was there for 15 minutes and there was no ambulance. One of the policemen, I think, did first aid. He looked after a man on the floor.”

Asked if she thought the collision was deliberate, she said: “I don’t think I should say that, but to me he went straight into them, he didn’t even bother to turn, just went back straight into them.”

Haggit said there were no flashing lights when the police car appeared and that it was travelling slowly at the time.

'They just kept coming'

The events and subsequent shutdown of the city centre affected much of the rest of the city.

Glen Gretton, a delivery driver who lives on Mansfield Road in Sherwood in the north of the city, said he was woken up at around 5am by the sounds of a series of police cars passing his home.

“I heard a police car go past. It was driving extremely quickly, followed by another one, another one," he said.

“They just kept coming so I knew something quite major … was happening somewhere around the city centre.”

Another eyewitness told GB News how he woke up at around 5.30am to what sounded like gunshots. Police are yet to say if firearms were used.

But the witness says he looked outside the window of his flat and saw smashed glass on the windshield of a white van, surrounded by armed police.

"We ran to the window and there was armed police running out of what looked like an undercover car, and then the suspect who was in the van was then Tasered and dragged out by them... I saw them arresting him from behind."

Other witnesses in Bentinck Road described the suspect struggling as officers dragged him out of a white van.

Student Demi Ojolow, who lives in the road, said: “I just saw the police shouting at him to get out of the car and get on the floor.

“And they dragged him out of the car and he just fell on the floor. He was still pretty wrestling at the point.

“They dragged him away and that was about it.”