A woman, who confronted the two men behind Wednesday’s terror attack in London and tried to persuade them to hand over their weapons, has emerged as a poster-girl against extremism after Prime Minister David Cameron praised her publicly saying that she “spoke for all of us” when she challenged them.
Ingrid Loyau-Kennett (48), a mother of two, was filmed talking to one of the suspects while he brandished a bloodied knife and the body of the soldier they had killed lay on the road. She was on her way to meet her children when she was caught up in the incident as her bus was stranded. She told the men they would never succeed in dividing the people as “it is only you versus many”. “I was sitting on the lower deck and the bus stopped. I could clearly see a body in the road and a crashed car…so I asked someone to watch my bag and then got off to see if I could help,” she said.
When she got nearer, a man, “with a black hat and a revolver in one hand and cleaver in the other came over”. “He was covered with blood. I thought I had better talk to him before he starts attacking somebody else…I asked him if he did it and he said yes and I said why? And he said because he has killed Muslim people in Muslim countries, he said he was a British soldier and I said really and he said ‘I killed him because he killed Muslims and I am fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan they have nothing to do there’,” she said.
Mr. Cameron singled her out for her “bravery” as he urged others to emulate her example.