Policeman tells how he fought London Bridge attackers with baton
A police officer has told how he fought off the three London Bridge attackers with his baton despite being temporarily blinded in one eye after he was stabbed in the head.
Speaking publicly for the first time since the terrorist attack earlier this month, Wayne Marques, who received several major knife wounds, said the adrenaline prevented him from realising how badly he had been injured.
He said he took a deep breath and charged at the first attacker, swinging at him “with everything I had as hard as I could, straight through his head, trying to go for a knockout blow”.
Although he heard the terrorist “yelp in pain”, the man struck back. “He’d hit me so hard that my right eye went lights out straight away, I just went blind,” Marques told the Press Association.
In a fight he believes lasted up to 90 seconds, the British Transport police (BTP) officer was set upon by Youssef Zaghba, Khuram Butt and Rachid Redouane. “The second one [attacker] and the third one I was basically fighting left to right, because I only had one eye so I’m moving left to right, left to right,” he said.
At that point he recalled being stabbed in the leg by the first attacker. He said: “I’m thinking: ‘Shit, there’s a knife in my leg,’ while I’m fighting the second one and the third one.”
After being stabbed in the hand he said he could remember little except for “swinging [my baton] all over the place”.
Marques has worked with BTP for just under two years and was a police community support officer with the Met for around six years beforehand.
He was near the start of his Saturday night shift and on patrol with a colleague in the area of London Bridge station when he heard screams and saw bouncers and customers queuing to get into a nearby bar standing “like deers in the headlights”.
The 38-year-old, who was born in Birmingham, initially thought the disturbance was a pub fight that had spilled out on to the street or a gang fight “at the most”.
But he was approached by an off-duty Metropolitan police officer who said he had seen someone stabbed, and shortly afterwards Marques himself witnessed people being attacked in Borough High Street near the junction with London Bridge Street. It was then that he charged the first attacker.
Marques was wounded just above his right eye and also suffered major injuries to his head, left leg and left hand. He has since recovered his sight.
“I didn’t realise how badly I was hurt,” he said. “The adrenaline, the fighting, all of that, I could feel what they were doing to me but I couldn’t feel it at the same time. I could just feel that I’d been cut and hurt.”
He said the terrorists were lined up against him, making him feel like he was in a western.
“The three of them were standing together almost shoulder to shoulder, like a little wolf pack, and they’re staring at me,” he said. “And that’s when I get to size them up.
“The short one that was on the righthand side, he was the one that I heard saying: ‘Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.’ He said it a few times, eyes bulging.”
He added: “And I’m basically just like a cowboy western movie waiting for the draw, waiting for them to make their move.”
But he said that for reasons he did not know the attackers instead rushed off towards Borough Market where they continued their rampage.
Redouane, 30, Butt, 27, and Zaghba, 22, killed eight people on the night of 3 June. They deliberately drove a white van into people on London Bridge before stabbing people in Borough Market, where all three were shot dead by police.