Three ‘stabbed’ while trying to stop ‘mugger armed with knife’ in the City of London

Have-a-go heroes were stabbed as they tried to stop a mugger armed with a knife in front of horrified commuters, according to eye-witnesses.

They told how three people were stabbed and another pushed to the ground when the thug turned on them just before 10am outside an office block near Liverpool Street station in central London.

The owner of a nearby shop said: “A guy tried to grab someone’s phone. People heard screaming and they tried to stop him, but then he punched one guy who fell on the floor.

“Four other guys tried to stop him and he stabbed them. When he saw those four guys he took a knife out his pocket and started stabbing.”

The man, who asked not to be named, said: “The police arrived 10 or 15 minutes after, but by then he had run off. There are cameras all outside here that must have seen him.

“This has happened a couple of times in this area and I’ve never heard of the police catching them.

“Even if the police catch him he will be out of jail in six months and doing it again.

“This happened because these guys tried to help and he stabbed four innocent people.”

A woman who works at legal firm Paul Hastings on Bishopsgate, said: “When I was walking past there this morning there were two men on the floor with bicycles and there was a lady on the floor also.

“I heard someone tried to steal a bike, but they stabbed them because they couldn’t manage to take the bike. But it looked more like a collision to me, because they were just lying there.

“The woman was on the floor and so were the men, but the men had bicycles by them. I heard a witness say that this guy just started stabbing them.

“I was there just before 10am. It must have literally just happened because the police were only starting to arrive and the people were still there.”

Medical bags lay strewn next to spatters of blood on the pavement while City of London Police stood guard at the scene.

An office worker, who asked not to be named, said: “A colleague of mine was out here this morning.

“He said he saw a scuffle, a fight, and realised one of the people was bleeding. It was someone who tried to intervene. It makes you think twice, doesn’t it?”

The shopkeeper added: “The financial area is not safe anymore. Last Saturday, teenage boys attacked my uncle in a shop.”

City of London Police said the incident was being treated as a “suspected robbery.”

A spokesman for the force said: “We received reports of three stabbings and a person pushed to the floor on Bishopsgate at 9.46am and officers arrived at the scene at 9.51am.

“Three victims were taken by paramedics to a nearby hospital to be treated.”

Paramedics took three patients to hospital, while one was treated and discharged at the scene. The condition of the stabbing victims in unknown at this stage.

A London Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We were called at 9:52am today to reports of a stabbing in Bishopsgate, central London.

“We sent a number of resources including three ambulance crews, two advanced paramedics, two incident response officers, a clinical team manager and members of our Tactical Response Unit.

“Our crews treated four patients. We have now taken three of these patients to hospital and one was assessed and discharged at the scene.”