A man who fought the London Bridge knife attacker with a fire extinguisher has nobly said he was “prepared to die to protect others.”
John Crilly was jailed in 2005 under the joint enterprise law for murder during a burglary gone wrong, even though he never fatally assaulted the victim. Since then he has studied for a law degree in prison, and overturned his murder charge, reducing it to a lesser charge of manslaughter.
“I was screaming at him to blow it. I was prepared to lose my life.” As he and others fought Khan on the street, he shouted at police to shoot the attacker.
“It seemed like ages before they shot him. It wasn’t all gung-ho and trigger happy, they proper took their time, to the point where I did scream ‘shoot him’.”
John Crilly (left) with Jack Merritt, the Cambridge University graduate killed in the London Bridge terror attack, who was described as a great person by many.
Crilly first knew something was wrong when he heard a woman scream at the event he was attending that day.
He went downstairs to find Miss Jones lying wounded on the floor before he saw Khan in the corridor, wielding two knives. After shouting at Khan, asking him what he was doing, Crilly remembers him saying: “He says something like ‘kill everyone’ or ‘kill you’, something about killing people.”
When asked if he thought Khan was targeting specific people, he said: “It seemed like everyone there was fair game.
“I just assume now that he just saw it as a big target. A room full of establishment people – judges, probation, police, security.”
Staff and participants of the conference attacked Khan with whatever they could find. Crilly fought him first with a wooden lectern and then a fire extinguisher, all the while believing he was wearing a live suicide belt.
He said he acted on “instinct” and “was screaming at to blow it… calling his bluff.” But he said Khan told him he was “waiting for the police” to arrive before detonating the belt, which police later found to be fake.
“I was prepared to probably lose my life”, he said.
Khan was then forced out of the building with a fire extinguisher and a tusk that was ripped off the wall, Crilly said: “The spray distracted him if you watch the footage. And the guy with the tusk has been able to give him a prod which has unbalanced him.”
He was then tackled and restrained until police arrived, eventually shooting the attacker dead on the spot.
