Passengers were “chucking everything” including a toaster and a woman’s Zimmer frame at a man who was stabbing people on a busy train, a court has heard.
Anthony Williams stabbed 10 people on the train which made an unscheduled stop in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, on 1 November last year.
One of the victims, Raza Aslam, told Cambridge Crown Court he was handed a frying pan to defend himself as “all hell’s broken loose”.
Williams, 33, of Langford Road in Peterborough, denies 10 counts of attempted murder, and four other alleged attempted murders in earlier incidents in Peterborough and London.
Jurors have been watching video interviews with the stabbing victims, who were attacked on the York to London King’s Cross LNER service.
Aslam said that not long after the train left Peterborough “someone just burst through the back door” of the carriage he was in and said “everybody run”.
He said he helped a mother and child into a toilet, which they locked themselves in, as he remained in the carriage.
Aslam described how train staff member Samir Zitouni “was rushing backwards and forwards like a busy beaver trying to get different things” like trolleys and pans to defend the passengers.
Williams then appeared, “seeing if I was hiding something behind my back”, Aslam recalled, before he felt “the knife stabbing”.
He remembered Zitouni and another man “chucking stuff” – including a woman’s Zimmer frame – and said the staff member had “saved me”.
Williams was the “calmest person I’ve ever met”, he said, adding: “If he had wanted he could have stabbed all of us in the back afterwards, he had plenty of opportunity and he didn’t.”
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