The shaken owner of a barber shop twice confronted by the Huntingdon train attack suspect said last week’s stabbing rampage could have been stopped if police ‘had taken us seriously.’
Ibrahim Wanas, owner of Ritzy Barbers in Fletton, Peterborough, has detailed for the first time how his staff were threatened with a large knife just hours before the shocking train assault that left ten people injured.
Anthony Williams, 32, of Peterborough, appeared at Peterborough magistrates’ court earlier this week charged with 11 counts of attempted murder in connection with a knife attack on board the LNER train and another in east London on November 1.
Police confirmed that Saturday’s attack has been linked to four other knife incidents, including threats made to staff by a knifeman at Ritzy Barbers last Friday night, and again on Saturday morning.
The man is said to have arrived at the shop just moments after a 14-year-old boy was stabbed in Peterborough city centre at 7.10pm. Staff only reported the incident to police around an hour-and-a-half later and no officers were sent to the scene.
But when the same man returned again the next morning, the barber shop made a second call to Cambridgeshire Police stating the man was still at the premises. However, police took 18 minutes to arrive, by which time the suspect had fled again.
Later that evening, at around 7.42pm, reports began coming through that a knifeman had stabbed multiple commuters aboard an LNER train from Doncaster to King’s Cross as it was approaching Huntingdon.
Mr Wanas said he has questioned whether the horrific attack would have taken place had police managed to arrest the suspect 24 hours earlier when he first approached his barber shop – a thought that ‘does weigh quite heavy on us,’ he added.
Ibrahim Wanas, owner of Ritzy Barbers in Fletton, Peterborough, has detailed how his staff were threatened just hours before the Huntingdon train attack
Mr Wanas said he has questioned whether the horrific attack would have taken place had police managed to arrest the suspect 24 hours earlier when he first approached his shop
Speaking to Sky News, he said: ‘We didn’t really comprehend until days after that we could have been victims.
‘I feel like we weren’t [taken] seriously and I feel that does weigh quite heavy on us as a team here because if they had took us seriously, would they have stopped the guy? Would the guy have been in custody and not on the train. Who knows?
‘But that sits on us because the police didn’t come fast enough to respond.’
CCTV footage exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail allegedly shows a man believed to be Williams entering Ritzy Barbers, in Fletton, Peterborough, on Friday evening at 7.14pm – minutes after police were called to the stabbing of the 14-year-old in the city centre.
Workers said the man was mumbling ‘It was feds, it was feds’ to himself before attempting to walk inside and sit down.
He was asked to leave, but returned a short time later with a plastic bag, appearing to turn his face away from the road as a police car drove past.
At 7.25pm, he started to rub his face, take a sip of a drink and yelled, ‘f*** your mum’ and ‘liars’, as he suddenly brandished a knife and walked inside.
In terrifying scenes the man, dressed in black with his hood up, then waved the implement about as customers ran to the back of the shop.
CCTV footage exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail allegedly shows a knifeman entering Ritzy Barbers in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, on Friday
The man is seen outside the shop holding what appears to be a knife – after being told to leave just minutes before
One customer was said to have been so frightened he barricaded himself into a kitchen at the back of the shop and began to pray.
Staff say he then demanded to know why customers had been laughing at him. ‘I’m going to allow you lot today’, he is then alleged to have said, before leaving the shop at the behest of staff.
Barber Cody Greene, 23, previously told Daily Mail: ‘I looked in the mirror on my side and I’ve seen him go with the knife in his hand, about to open the door.
‘At that moment, the only thing I’m thinking is ‘I’ve got to protect myself and my client’, so I tried to grab my client – all it takes is one or two steps and he could have cut my client’s neck.
‘Everyone started to see what’s going on and moved backwards and it was just so quiet, the only thing we could hear was him.
‘I could hear him saying ‘you’re laughing at me?’ and ‘suck your mum’ and ‘I’m going to catch a case today’ and ‘you’re drawing me out’ – he was speaking for like 20 to 30 seconds.
‘Then he said ‘I’m going to allow you lot to today’ – when I heard that I started counting my graces. One of the clients locked themselves in the kitchen, he was really distressed and we couldn’t actually get in there.’
He added of the man he was confronted with: ‘It seemed like the lights were on but no-one’s home. You looked at him and you knew straight away, it was a red flag.’
Recalling events of that night, Mr Wanas – who was not in the shop at the time – said he received a frantic phone call from Mr Greene moments after the attacker left.
‘I actually thought the boys were trying to wind me up because of the sort of relationship we have in the shop… and it was Halloween. And then I could kind of tell by the tone in his voice that he sounded a bit distressed.
‘So I rushed to the shop straight away. By the time I got here I just made sure everyone was OK.’
He said 90 minutes had passed by this point and when he phoned police, he was told would be deployed because the suspect had left. Instead, they were asked to upload their CCTV to an online portal.
But then the man returned to the shop on Saturday morning, at around 9.16am. CCTV caught the man glancing inside the shop before being chased away by workers who recognised him from the night before.
Despite calling police, Mr Wanas said officers took nearly 20 minutes to arrive, by which time the suspect had fled.
Barber Mr Greene added of the man: ‘I thought when I saw him he’s come back to finish the job. He must have seen how many people were in the shop and got put off by it, because the footage shows he was definitely making his way to the door.
‘I was terrified, even now, my anxiety levels were through the roof. I thought my life was really in jeopardy, my heart was in my stomach.’
After leaving the shop for the first time, the man returned with a plastic bag and appeared to drink something before he entered the shop with a knife
The same man then walked past the barber shop again the next morning, CCTV showed
It was only the next day, after the Huntingdon train attack and 48 hours after the barber shop initially called the police, that officers came to review their CCTV in person.
Mr Wanas said: ‘That’s when I think they kind of realised that it could be the same person. And we ourselves realised that, well, it could have been us in that situation.’
A spokesperson for Cambridgeshire Police said in a statement: ‘This matter was already referred to the IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct) but did not meet the threshold for a referral. Our internal review continues into any potential incidents relating to events on Saturday.
‘The investigation into these offences now sits with the British Transport Police.’
