Train attack passenger describes being stabbed as ‘like an electric shock’
A train passenger injured in a mass stabbing told police his first knife wound was like “an electric shock”, a court has heard.
Video evidence from Jonathan Gjoshe was played to a jury at Cambridge Crown Court on Wednesday, where Anthony Williams is on trial for 14 counts of attempted murder.
Mr Gjoshe said when he first saw Williams, dressed all in black, in coach J of the LNER service from Doncaster to London on November 1 last year, he thought he was someone he knew.
“I’ve made eye contact with him… he’s pulled a knife, but I just think it was the way he’s poked me, the way he’s stabbed me, it was a bit weird because it was slow.
“It was not rapid,” he told police in the video recorded interview.
He said Williams did not make eye contact with him as he struck, staring instead at his shoulder.
“When I first saw the knife, that’s when I screamed and my phone’s gone flying,” Mr Gjoshe said.
“The first poke was like an electric shock, then the adrenalin kicked in.”
He could not remember how he sustained five other knife wounds, one of which he told police was 5mm from a nerve, with the first wound near a bone.
Mr Gjoshe’s account is the first from passengers who were on the train to be heard by the jury.
Williams, 33, denies attempting to murder 10 people on an LNER train that was stopped in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, on November 1 last year.
He also denies the attempted murders of three people in Peterborough on October 31, and of a 17-year-old boy at Pontoon Dock DLR station in London in the early hours of November 1.
Judge Mr Justice Calver earlier told jurors at Cambridge Crown Court that whether Williams carried out the attacks is not in question, but they must consider whether he intended to kill.
Mr Gjoshe said he was “drenched with blood, my whole arm”, and called out to other passengers “guys, I’ve been stabbed, there’s a guy with a knife on the train, run”.
He said “some people thought it was a joke”, and others ran.
“I was sure I was the first victim,” he said. “If I wasn’t the first victim, people would have been running down towards me.”
He scrambled over seats and fled down the train, fearing Williams was chasing him, the court heard.
“It was like a movie, it was quite horrific,” he said.
Mr Gjoshe described Williams’s eyes as looking like he had “definitely had a few drinks”, and told police the attacker showed no emotion as he struck.
He said he had a “pure straight face, no emotion, he’s just looked at my shoulder and the knife going in… he hasn’t said a single word”.
Later in hospital, the court heard Mr Gjoshe asked asked medical staff “am I going to die today?”.
He said this was because it was “the first time I’ve seen myself drenched with blood and the pain I was feeling”.
Jurors then heard the video recorded evidence of Sachin Balakrishnan, also a passenger in carriage J, who said he heard “screaming” so “I stood up and looked behind to see what the screaming was”.
He said he “saw people trying to jump over the seats” and running, and heard screaming, before he saw a man with a “big knife” who “was saying something but nothing meaningful”.
Mr Balakrishnan said “everything was calm before the screaming… in less than a minute he was with me”.
He saw the man waving a knife around, and remembered “just trying to save myself”, trying to work out how to get away because he was in a seat and Williams was in the aisle.
Mr Balakrishnan said he felt as if something was hitting him in the sides, and did not realise until later that he had been stabbed.
He began telling everyone that there was a man with a knife, and “ran and ran and ran” down the train.
“This guy was running behind me, there was nowhere to go. Nowhere was safe.”
He ran down two or three coaches, and did not want to look behind him as he could hear people screaming.
“Everyone was running for their lives,” he told police.
Mr felt pain in his right arm and “realised I could see the flesh”, he said.
“While I was running… I thought I was alright, but I could feel my top getting wet. I thought it might have been my drink.”
But when he put his hand to his chest, he realised his top was soaked with blood, jurors heard.