A reformed ex-prisoner who fought the London Bridge knife attacker with a fire extinguisher has said he was prepared to die to protect others. John Crilly, 48, who was jailed for murder after a burglary went wrong, tackled Usman Khan while believing he was wearing a live suicide belt.
“I was screaming at him to blow it. I was prepared to lose my life,” Crilly said in his first broadcast interview since the attack. He told of the moment armed police confronted the knifeman on London Bridge, saying: “It seemed like ages before they shot him. It wasn’t all gung-ho and trigger happy, they proper took their time, to the point where I did scream ‘shoot him’.”
Khan, convicted of terrorist offences in 2012, killed two people – Cambridge University graduates Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones – and wounded three others during a prisoner rehabilitation conference at Fishmongers’ Hall on 29 November. Crilly, who was attending the Learning Together conference, heard a scream and went downstairs to find Miss Jones wounded before seeing Khan armed with two knives. Khan told him he was “waiting for the police” before detonating a belt, which police later found to be fake.
Crilly fought Khan with a wooden lectern and then a fire extinguisher. He and others used makeshift weapons including a pole and a whale tusk to force Khan out of the building and onto the street. In video footage, Crilly is seen using spray from the extinguisher to blind Khan while another man held him back with the tusk. Other bystanders helped pin Khan down before police shot him dead.
Crilly was close friends with Mr Merritt, who he said changed his life. “Jack gave up his life, he would be my hero,” Crilly said. He described Mr Merritt as “easy to talk to” and “genuinely interested”. Crilly was given a life sentence for murder and robbery in 2005 under the joint enterprise law after his associate struck a fatal blow during a burglary.
