Horror after London attack: 'Can’t believe what I just saw'

Raw terror on the streets of London.

Rick Longley recounted watching the horror unfold Wednesday in two parts across from the iconic Big Ben, after a homicidal motorist plowed down screaming pedestrians.

“We were just walking up to the station and there was a loud bang and a guy, someone, crashed a car and took some pedestrians out,” Longley told the Press Association, the Associated Press reported. “They were just laying there, and then the whole crowd just surged around the corner by the gates just opposite Big Ben."

Longley said the attacker suddenly came close after jumping out of his vehicle, running toward a policeman outside Parliament. "A guy came past my right shoulder with a big knife and just started plunging it into the policeman," he said. “I have never seen anything like that. I just can’t believe what I just saw.”

Four people were killed and at least 40 were injured in the attack, which British authorities are investigating as an act of terrorism. One woman was pulled from the Thames River, injured but alive. Police shot and killed the attacker.

Witnesses described a dramatic scene on a gray afternoon in an area normally packed with tourists, pedestrians and commuters. Passersby rushed to help the injured as police and emergency crews raced to the area. A medical helicopter landed amid the chaos in Parliament Square.

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Jayne Wilkinson told The Australian she was taking photos of Big Ben when people begin scrambling toward her. “We saw all the people running toward us ... and then there was a ... guy in about his 40s carrying a knife about seven or eight inches long,” she told the paper. “There were three shots fired, and then we crossed the road and looked over. The man was on the floor with blood.”

Camilla Tominey, a Sunday Express reporter, said she was having coffee in a building close to Parliament when a "huge commotion" rang out and police began shouting for people to take cover, CTV News Channel reported.

Richard Tyse had just exited the Westminster Tube station when police began a lockdown, he told Sky News. As he looked over the Westminster Bridge, "I must have counted 8-10 prostrate figures on the ground. ... The whole length of the bridge there were people on the ground who had clearly been injured."

Natasha Monet told CTV she saw officers surround a gray SUV that crashed into a fence near the entrance to Parliament. She told the station the scene was “extremely shocking” — but not completely surprising. “We have been warned in London that a terrorist attack was likely,” she said.

Amid the carnage, one British lawmaker was being called a hero.

Conservative parliamentarian and Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the police officer who was stabbed and applied pressure to his wounds, AP reported. The officer later died.

Photos showed Ellwood, whose brother was killed in the Bali terror attack in 2002, with blood on his hands and face, talking to emergency service personnel. Tory Minister Alan Duncan told The Telegraph: "He has done very well. He was the right man in the right place."

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