The commuters were on their way to the Tube and family homes were buzzing with activity, getting ready for school.
But the Tuesday morning routine of the residents of the quiet north-east London neighbourhood of Hainault was suddenly shattered by the sound of a speeding van slamming into the side of a house.
Moments later, ear-piercing screams would reverberate around a suburban close as a boy of 14 in his tracksuit was struck down in a vicious and unprovoked sword attack.
It was part of a terrifyingly violent and bloody rampage that would leave the boy dead and four others, including two police officers, seriously wounded.
Exactly what happened – and why – is what the police were still trying to piece together last night, unable to question their suspect while he receives hospital treatment. But witnesses said that at around 6.50am a grey Ford Transit van with its bumper hanging off stopped in the middle of a cul-de-sac on Laing Close.
Police were scrambled to the scene following reports that a car had driven into a property
A man ‘wielding a machete’ was seen ‘prowling the streets of east London’
Neighbours cautiously opened their front doors and peered out of garden windows after a man let himself out of the crumpled and smoking van, holding a mobile phone and asking onlookers where he was. Confusion quickly turned to terror as the man withdrew a samurai-style sword from the back of his trousers and began stalking the streets.
The schoolboy victim, understood to be the son of two teachers, stood no chance, witnesses said. Just yards from his front door, he was cut down as a neighbour screamed to warn him.
The teenager died later in hospital but one onlooker said the attack was so vicious he had believed he died ‘on the spot’.
As the victim lay fatally wounded on the corner of Laing Close, his killer dragged him from the road towards the pavement before he began prowling through front gardens, wielding his weapon as if hunting for his next target.
‘He was running around, still after the police officers came, with the sword in his hand looking for victims,’ James Fernando said.
Mobile phone footage showed a bearded man, clad in a yellow Quiksilver hoodie, crouching outside a house scanning the street as police cars and an ambulance drew closer.
One terrified resident said: ‘We were very scared and trying to hide and not show ourselves through the window, because he was standing right next to our house and he could have seen us if he looked up.
‘We were trying to hide but also at the same time taking video of him attacking the police, and of the body on the floor, so, yeah, we were very scared and we didn’t know what to do.’
The man was confronted by the first police officer on the scene, who held out their hand while desperately calling for back-up on their radio, torn between trying to help the stricken teenager and going after his attacker.
Dramatic footage showed the moment a sword-wielding man was tasered and arrested
Undeterred by the arrival of the emergency services, the suspect screamed out ‘Does anyone here believe in God?’ before twisting and darting away from the approaching officer into an alleyway on Franklyn Gardens.
As brave officers chased the suspect down, he lashed out at them with the sword, leaving two with injuries severe enough to require surgery. He also slashed a further two members of the public, thought to have been commuters making their way to Hainault Station. They needed to be rushed to hospital with sword wounds.
The man was next captured on video as officers looked to pin him into what appeared to be a dead end – a section of garages tucked between Franklyn Gardens and Thurlow Gardens.
But as a policeman calmly approached, demanding ‘come here, drop the sword’, the man quickly scaled a fence, reappearing on top of neighbouring garages before dropping out of sight into an adjacent back garden.
The officer’s tone quickly turned to panic, muttering ‘he’s going into people’s gardens, man,’ before bellowing a warning to those living nearby: ‘Lock your doors! Everyone lock your doors!’
Still wielding his samurai-style sword, the man began vaulting garden fences before he found his way through to a driveway on Thurlow Gardens, where, thanks to 1,200-volt Tasers, he was subdued and his rampage brought to an end.
Chief Superintendent Stuart Bell reads a statement to the media near the scene in Hainault, north east London, after a child died
The major emergency service response in Hainault on April 30. Pictured: New North Road
‘Don’t move, don’t f****** move’, could be heard from the officers who surrounded him. Nagesh Katipally, who lives in the street, said: ‘When the police came they took the knife and they wrapped him up in a black sheet.
‘They put it over his head and then around the rest of his body, then they lifted it up and carried him away. He was still alive and was showing resistance.’
The relief was palpable in the voice of the policeman who breathed into his service radio: ‘Subject secure.’
It was the same relief that soon spread across Hainault as the horrifying ordeal came to an end — but the questions, and the repercussions, will go on.