AN IRISHWOMAN who witnessed what the police have described as a terrorist incident has spoken of the terrifying moment she came face-to-face with the assailant.
Eva Murphy, 24, emerged from the London Underground at Leytonstone station in East London on Saturday evening with her three friends, when they came across the scene.
Muhaydin Mire, 29, was wielding a knife in an attack that saw three people get stabbed.
A 56-year-old man was seriously wounded in the attack, while two others suffered minor injuries.
“We actually did think we were going to die,” she said on The Tubridy Show on RTÉ Radio One this morning.
“We thought we were going to die when he produced the knife with the blood all over it.”
Ms Murphy had spent her afternoon with friends in London’s Oxford Circus, taking in the Christmas lights display.
They had been on their way home when they found themselves in the middle of the distressing events – seeing one of the victims lying in a pool of blood on the floor.
“We walked through the crowd and then we saw a man on the floor. His eyes were rolling back in his head,” she said.
“We thought he had fallen down the stairs but there was a massive pool of blood and it was so thick.”
Noting that the man was being tended to, the four women continued to the exit of the station, when a man came rushing towards them telling them it was “not safe” and to run.
Without realising, they were standing beside the attacker, who had stood behind a whiteboard display in the station.
“We were standing two feet away from his knife but it wasn't registering what was happening,” she said.
But Ms Murphy, a teacher from Wexford, spotted the blade of a knife sticking out of the attacker’s sleeve.
“Another woman skimmed past in front of us, going into the station, and he went for her neck and missed her,” she said.
“But he kept jabbing at her. We were screaming and crying. He got the woman.”
Metropolitan Police arrived on the scene at about 7pm on Saturday evening and within five minutes Mr Mire had been tasered and arrested.
The 29-year-old, of Sansom Road, Leytonstone, will appear before Westminster Magistrates Court today charged with attempted murder.
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