AMIDST the “panic” and “chaos” as commuters fled the Parsons Green terror attack, a witness has claimed that passengers were seen “taking selfies”.
Ryan Barnett said several people were also taking photographs following the explosion at the south-west London station during yesterday morning’s rush-hour.
But he said he was shocked to see some pausing for selfies in the stampede.
The 25-year-old, who works in politics and had been travelling to his office, said: “Someone said there had been an explosion, there was white stuff, someone said there was a lot of wires, one girl outside the station had her leg pretty badly cut up.
“People were saying there was one man who was singed down the side of his body, including his hair.
“It felt like an eternity, but it was only a couple of minutes, probably.
“There were a lot of people taking photos, there was a couple of people taking selfies and I thought: ‘What is the world coming to?’”
Describing the moments immediately after the blast, Barnett said: “I was sitting there, headphones in, at Parsons Green, the doors open fine, I’m not really paying attention and all of a sudden hundreds of people run past me screaming a mixture of ‘stampede, attack, terrorist, explosion, get off the train, everyone run’.
“Parsons Green station has a staircase at the front of the carriage where the train pulls up - I’m running and keeping my head down because there might be gunfire and on to the staircase.
“But when I was on the staircase, the stewards and other passengers, they are shouting ‘stop, stop, stop’, so I ended up squashed on the staircase, people were falling over, people fainting, crying, there were little kids clinging on to the back of me.
“It is absolute chaos, it was quite scary because at one stage we thought we might be trapped there – I heard a pregnant woman lost her shoes and had fallen over.”
Sylvain Pennec, a software developer from Southfields, near Wimbledon, was around 10 metres from the source of the explosion when fire filled the carriage. I heard a boom and when I looked there were flames all around,” he said.
“People started to run but we were lucky to be stopping at Parsons Green as the door started to open.”
He described the scene of panic as commuters struggled to escape the carriage, “collapsing and pushing” each other.
Pennec stayed behind to take a closer look at what he believed was the source of the explosion.
“It looked like a bucket of mayonnaise,” he said.
“I’m not sure if it was a chemical reaction or something else, but it looked home-made. I’m not an expert though.”
Chris Wildish, who was on the train, said he saw a “device” in the last carriage.
He told BBC 5 live: “Flames were still coming out of it when I saw it and had a lot of wires hanging out of it – I can only assume it was done on purpose.
“It was standing against the door of the rear-most carriage.”
Media technology consultant Richard Aylmer-Hall, 53, was sitting on the service bound for central London when the panic unfolded.
He said: “I was blissfully reading my paper and listening to a podcast and suddenly the whole world charged past me down the platform, down the Tube. There was a woman on the platform who said she had seen a bag, a flash and a bang, so obviously something had gone off.
“I saw crying women, there was lots of shouting and screaming, there was a bit of a crush on the stairs going down to the streets.”
Passenger Peter Crowley was sitting in the carriage on his way from Wimbledon when the explosion happened.
He said his head was burned by a “really hot intense fireball above my head” and added: “There were people a lot worse than me.”
Emma Stevie, 27, who was also on the train, said she was caught in a “human stampede” and the crush on the station steps as people rushed away from the train.
“I wedged myself in next to a railing, I put myself in the foetal position,” she said.
“There was a pregnant woman underneath me, and I was trying really hard not to crush her. I saw a poor little boy with a smashed-in head and other injuries. It was horrible.”
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