Stephen Crean was one of several people injured as a knife-wielding attacker descended on passengers on an LNER service travelling from Doncaster to London on Saturday
A brave football fan who used only his fists to fight off a knife-wielding attacker on a busy train has said he was asked if he wanted to die.
Stephen Crean was one of several victims injured while travelling from Cambridgeshire to London on Saturday night. The 61-year-old was returning home from watching Nottingham Forest draw 2-2 with Manchester United. The mass stabbing on the 6.25pm LNER service from Doncaster to London’s King’s Cross station on Saturday night left 11 people injured, with police confirming last night that two people remain in a critical condition.
Passengers said the attack began after the train passed through Peterborough before the hero driver made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, allowing them to get off safely.
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Mr Crean detailed the moment he saw a woman running through the carriage and yelling “knife, knife, there’s a man with a big knife.” Mr Crean said as passengers ran down the carriage into the buffet car, there was “nowhere to go” and he “didn’t have much choice” in fighting back against the alleged knife attacker.
He said the knifeman asked if he wanted to die before he felt the knife in his arm. “He asked me, ‘Do you want to die?’,” he told PA. “He repeated it. Then I remember his knife going into my arm.”
Mr Crean said the knife caught him several times as he confronted the attacker on the train. He told te PA news agency: “I got caught on my fingers. He took a swing at this, and a swing at that. I got caught on the head. I was lucky. I got caught on the back a few times. They caught me a few times.”
“The front of me, and my other arm. In the face and everything.” He added: “I’m going to need plastic surgery. One finger doesn’t look clever. I’ve had stitches on them all. I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”
He added he had no opportunity to get away to a place of safety when the man approached with a “sword-type thing” but he was able to get into a train toilet after the confrontation. Of his decision to fight back, he said: “Probably not many people would’ve done it, but then you’re leaving people behind you vulnerable.”
He has been described as a hero and said: “It’s lovely that people are saying nice things about me.” Anthony Williams, 32, was named and pictured for the first time today after being charged with 10 counts of attempted murder.
Williams, of Langford Road, Peterborough, was also charged with one count of actual bodily harm (ABH), one count of possessing a bladed article.
