U.K. Parliament Assailant Shot by Police

LONDON — Britain’s Parliament was placed on
lockdown on Wednesday afternoon after a man
stabbed a police officer and was then shot by other
officers. The Metropolitan Police said it was treating
the violence as “ a terrorist incident,” as the
country’s seat of power was put on high alert.
Witnesses also reported that a motorist on
Westminster Bridge, next to Parliament, operating a
large vehicle, mowed down at least five people
before coming to a halt, but it was not clear if the
motorist was also the assailant.

Witnesses said they had heard gunfire near
Portcullis House , an office building for lawmakers
and members of their staff. The police said officers
had been summoned to the bridge around 2:40 p.m.
because of reports of “a firearms incident.”
But basic details remained unclear an hour after the
episode.
The BBC broadcast images showing people,
apparently wounded, receiving care while lying on
the bridge.
Inside the House of Commons, the astonished
lawmakers were told that they should not leave the
chamber.
“At the moment, the very clear advice from the
police and the director of security in the house is
that we should remain under suspension, and that
the chamber should remain in lockdown until we’ve
received advice that it is safe to go back to normal
procedures,” David Lidington, the leader of the
House of Commons, the lower house of Parliament,
told lawmakers in remarks broadcast live on the
BBC.
Mr. Lidington, while cautioning that his
information, was “very limited,” said: “What I am
able to say to the House is that there has been a
serious incident within the estate. It seems that a
police officer has been stabbed; that the alleged
assailant was shot by armed police. An air
ambulance is attending the scene to remove the
casualties. There are also reports of further violent
incidents in the vicinity.”
The parliamentary complex and the Westminster
station on the Tube, London’s subway system, were
locked down, and the BBC reported that Prime
Minister Theresa May was quickly ushered into a
silver Jaguar as the gunfire erupted. An air
ambulance landed inside the complex, apparently to
evacuate wounded people.

Jayne Wilkinson, 59, from Birmingham, England,
was near the statue of Winston Churchill in
Parliament Square with her partner, David Turner,
56, when they saw people suddenly running from the
Parliament building.

The couple said they had seen a middle-aged man
holding a knife. He ignored warnings from the
police, running though the gates into the compound
of Parliament, she said.
“They were shouting to warn him,” Ms. Wilkinson
said. Soon after, she and her partner heard three
gunshots and saw the man on the ground.
Three construction workers who were inside the
grounds of Westminster Palace said they heard shots
fired in rapid succession before they were escorted
off the premises. “It was bang-bang-bang,” one of
them said.
Reuben Saunders, an American student at Cambridge
University who was visiting Parliament, said he was
on his way out of the building when he saw a police
officer being attacked by the assailant.
“He was at the gate, I heard screaming,” Mr.
Saunders said, adding that the assailant had two
knives or similar weapons. “I saw the man on the
ground being repeatedly stabbed, or pummeled,”

“There was another policeman standing by,” he
added. “I thought he should have shot, but maybe he
was unarmed.”
Mr. Saunders said that two or three other police
officers arrived and, at that point, he retreated.
“There were two or three gunshots,” he said.
Robert Vaudry, 52, a fund manager from Stratford-
upon-Avon, England, said he emerged from the
Westminster subway station around 2:40 p.m. for a
meeting with a lawmaker when he realized that
something was amiss.

“I came out of the Tube and there were two armed
policemen,” he said in an interview. “One grabbed
my arm, pushed me to the left and said, ‘Get out of
here,’ ” he said. “They were shouting at everyone to
get away.”
As he spoke, police officers were cordoning off the
area. One officer shouted, “We need everyone to
move back past Downing Street.”
Christopher Hope , a journalist for The Daily
Telegraph, reported at 2:41 p.m. that he had heard
shots fired outside Parliament.

Kevin Schofield, a journalist at the political website
Politics Home, reported that a police officer had been
injured, and that he had seen an assailant carrying a
knife or a gun.

Britain has not suffered a large-scale terrorist attack
since July 7, 2005, when bomb attacks on subway
trains and on a bus killed more than 50 people.
Political violence is relatively rare in Britain, where
gun ownership is seriously restricted.
In 1979, a lawmaker was assassinated near the
Parliament building. Airey Neave, a Conservative
Party member, was killed when his car was blown
up.
Radoslaw Sikorski , a former foreign minister who
was in the area, told the BBC he had seen a collision
and saw someone down in great distress. He said he
saw a vehicle mowing people down and that at least
five people were seriously injured. He said he saw at
least one person was bleeding. “Someone was down
in great distress,” he said.
Tom Peck, political editor for the newspaper The
Independent, said on Twitter: “There was a loud
bang. Screams. Commotion. Then the sound of
gunshots. Armed police everywhere.”
President Trump was briefed on the shooting,
according to the White House press secretary, Sean
Spicer.