The train left Peterborough station at 7.30pm.
Moments later, there came a message over the tannoy: “We are aware there is an incident... just keep yourselves safe.”
What followed was 14 minutes of terror as London North Eastern Railway (LNER) passengers were trapped in a moving train with a marauding knife attacker.
Some tried to hide in the toilets; others collapsed from their injuries, soaking the train seats in blood during a scene that felt “like something from a film”, witnesses said.
The attacker is understood to have begun his rampage shortly after the train departed Peterborough station, shutting travellers on board until it made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon 14 minutes later.
One passenger initially believed that it was a Halloween prank until he saw blood covering the carriages.
But it was one of Britain’s largest mass stabbings, which left two people fighting for their lives and injured 10 others yesterday.
A taxi driver waiting at the platform said the attacker, who was carrying a large kitchen knife, was shouting “kill me, kill me” as police tasered him and wrestled him to the ground.
Defence Secretary John Healey said he had travelled on the same service a few hours before the attack.
Saturday’s busy 6.25pm (local time) LNER service from Doncaster had been set to arrive at London’s King’s Cross in two hours, but the violence began after the train stopped at Peterborough station at 7.30pm.
Witnesses said people attempting to flee had nowhere to escape.
“It was a terrible scene, really violent,” one person added.
The first thing Olly Foster saw was a passenger who ran past shouting: “Run, run, run... there’s a guy stabbing literally everyone and everything”.
“At first, there were a few of us kind of looking at each other thinking it was a joke – like it’s Halloween, it might be a prank,” Foster told the BBC.
“But then you can kind of see in their faces they’re being serious. I put my hand on a chair, just trying to push myself forward, and then I look at my hand and it’s covered in blood.
“And then I look at the chair and there’s blood all over the chair. And then I look ahead, there’s blood all on the chairs.
“We pulled the emergency alarm and were trying to work out if we could barricade the doors, can we lock the doors.
“By the time I got to the end of the carriage, I realised I was actually at the back of [the train] and there were about six of us.
“There was a girl who was really, really in a bit of a state because the guy actually tried to stab her. One of the older guys was an absolute hero and had blocked it with his head. He had a gash in his head and a gash in his neck.”
Steve, who only gave his first name, had been on the opposite end of the train with his children when they heard an alarm going off, causing people to panic.
“As soon as we heard something was amiss, we grabbed everything in our bags and said we’re moving down the train, we are going to get to the opposite end,” he told the BBC.
“They [his children] were very brave and they really looked after each other. They are obviously very shaken up but they were very brave about it.
“It was just unnerving not knowing what was happening... knowing you were in a box and couldn’t get out of it if you wanted to.
“A lot of people were crying; one of the girls we were with had blood on her coat from when someone had tried to get past, to get away, who had been stabbed so there was a lot of upset and a lot of people were scared about what happened.”
The train was due to travel through Huntingdon at 200km/h on a fast track that does not have access to a platform, but the crew and signallers diverted it to the slow line and it stopped at the station after 14 minutes.
“A woman came on the tannoy and said ‘we are aware there is an incident, just keep yourselves safe’, which was scary to hear because you didn’t know what was going on,” Steve added.
Sirens wailed through the night as ambulance crews and firefighters were called to the scene. Ben Obese-Jecty, the Tory MP for Huntingdon, said he had “never seen as big a response”.
The first 999 call was made at 7.39pm, with officers boarding the train and apprehending two suspects by 7.51pm.
Steve went on to say: “We pulled into a station and I think everybody assumed it was Stevenage because that was the next scheduled stop. We hammered on the doors to get out and the doors opened and it was Huntingdon, which wasn’t what anyone was expecting.
“I shouted down to the train crew on the platform ‘what should we do, what should we do?’ Because I don’t know whether to get off or stay on the train. And they didn’t know so everyone started to run.
“There was a bit of a panic and everyone ran into the station forecourt... then we ran to someone’s house and hammered on all the doors and pressed all the buzzers. We got let in and a very kind elderly couple looked after us until it was safe to leave.”
As passengers poured onto the platform, armed police ran towards the train. One suspect is believed to have been shot with a Taser after the bloody rampage.
After earlier saying two British nationals, one aged 32 and one aged 35, had been arrested, British police now say only one is still a suspect.
“A 35-year-old man from London who was also arrested at the scene has been released with no further action,” the update reads.
“It was reported in good faith to officers responding to the incident that he was involved in the attack, and following inquiries we can confirm that he was not involved.”
The attack suspect boarded the train at Peterborough, police say and is being held on suspicion of attempted murder.
“Essentially, as they got closer to him, [police] started shouting ‘get down get down’,” a passenger told Sky News. “He then was waving a knife – quite a large knife – and then they detained him.
“I think it was a Taser that got him down in the end.”
Viorel Turturica, 42, a taxi driver, told the Daily Mail that the man shouted “kill me, kill me, kill me” to the officers who arrested him.
“I had arrived at the station pick-up point at 7.41pm and was waiting for a passenger,” he said. “As soon as I see the passenger a few minutes later, I then see everybody running out of the station.
“Then 10 seconds later, a man dressed in black holding a huge kitchen knife in his hand runs past my car at 7.47pm.
“The police arrived seconds later and I could hear him shouting, ‘kill me, kill me, kill me’ to them.”
At one point, police declared “Plato”, the national code word used by emergency services when responding to a “marauding terror attack”.
But this was later rescinded, British Transport Police said, and officers added there was no indication that this was a terrorist attack.
Healey said the UK’s terror-threat level remained unchanged at “substantial” – meaning that an attack is considered “likely” – as before.
“This was the very service that my wife and I, Jackie, took just a few hours before this attack. It’s the service I use every week to get home to Rotherham, so I can’t begin to imagine how shocked and frightened those passengers were,” he told Sky News.
The train continued to sit at Huntingdon on Sunday morning as emergency services tried to piece together exactly how the 14 minutes of terror had unfolded.
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