Woman hailed as hero
Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, a brave scout leader who may have prevented further violence, has emerged as an unlikely hero in the apparent terror attack that left one man dead on the streets of London.
The 48-year-old mother kept talking to the two attackers before police came, trying to keep them calm.
She said she saw a crashed car and the victim lying on the street and tried to help him since she had been trained in first aid.
She said a man "with a black hat and a revolver in one hand and a cleaver in the other came over" and excitedly warned her to stay away from the body.
"I asked him why he had done what he had done," The Guardian quoted her as saying. "He said he had killed the man because he (the victim) was a British soldier who killed Muslim women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was furious about the British army being over there."
When the man told her he was going to kill police when they arrived, she asked him if that was reasonable and tried to keep him engaged.
Then she spoke to the other attacker, whom she described as quiet and shy.
"I asked him if he wanted to give me what he was holding in his hand, which was a knife, but I didn't want to say that," she said. "He didn't agree and I asked him: 'Do you want to carry on?' He said: 'No, no, no.' I didn't want to upset him," she is quoted as saying in The Guardian.
Loyau-Kennett said she was not scared and that the armed men did not seem to be drunk or on drugs. She said she was trying to keep them occupied so they didn't get more agitated.
AP
(China Daily 05/24/2013 page12)
