A construction worker hurled chairs, pint glasses, bottles and discarded bicycle parts at the terrorists to get them to stop attacking a woman who had already been repeatedly stabbed.
Gerard Vowls, 47, said he heard one of the attackers shout “This is for Allah” as they crowded over her, using the knives again and again.
Mr Vowls had been watching the Champions League final in a pub and was going home when the attack began. The three men appeared “brain dead”, he said. “They just looked blank. They were in another frame of mind. They just didn’t care who they killed. They knew what they wanted to do, and it was to stab people,” he said. “They just wouldn’t stop.”
He was heading towards Borough Market before going home when he heard a man saying he had been stabbed. At first Mr Vowls did not believe him, but the man moved his hand and blood began to pour from his torso.
Then he saw a blonde woman, thought to be in her 20s or 30s, being stabbed.
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“All three of them were on the one woman. One went, ‘This is for Allah’. They went on stabbing her. She was going, ‘help me, help me’ .”
Mr Vowls said: “I tried to throw a bike at him. It was the basket of the bike. The bike was on the ground. They ran off, the three of them ran off towards Borough Market. They got as far as the Globe [pub], and some guy came round the corner, saying, ‘Run, run, run, they’ve got knives. They’re terrorists. They’re going to kill you.’
“But he was too late. They got to him. He got stabbed as well. He was on the floor.”
Mr Vowls, a builder for Lang O’Rourke working on Crossrail, said the attack continued around the market. He thought at one stage that a terrorist in a red jacket was chasing him. He hoped he would be able to lead the man on to the street where police could shoot him dead.
“At the Southwark Tavern, I saw a black guy — he was the doorman — get stabbed. He was on the floor. I was telling everyone, ‘Go, go, go. They’ve got knives, they’re terrorists’. They went to a restaurant, and [then] another one. They went to the Wheatsheaf [pub].
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“As they left, I was going, ‘Oi, cowards!’ I chucked a bottle at them, pint glasses, stools, chairs — whatever I could find.
“The police came, but they were going the wrong way. I thought, ‘If they follow me, the police can get to the main road and the police can shoot them’. Then [the attackers] went to the Market Porter [pub], into the reception bit.
“They stabbed a man, and then a woman. I heard bottles going. They came out of there. They went to the restaurant on the right. They went in there, then they came out, and they stabbed a black guy. I heard him screaming. It was like a battle. A sword battle.”
Mr Vowls said that he could see that the suicide belt strapped to the chests of one of the men was a fake. “I could see it was duct tape. I knew it wasn’t real. If it was, they would have set it off.”
After the attack, Mr Vowls returned to one of the market pubs and spoke to other people who had been caught up in the violence.
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He described how the man who had told him that his friend had been stabbed then told him he had died: “He sat at the table and just started crying his eyes out. I was putting my arm around his shoulder.”
He returned to his flat in Bermondsey and said that he woke at 5.30am yesterday screaming and haunted by the memory of the woman crying for help as she lay on the ground.
“If she’s alive, please let me go and see her. I wanted to save her. But what could you do against three guys with three knives? I was defenceless.”