Gun officers have been trained to shoot terrorists in the head who could detonate themselves, the investigation into the Fishmongers’ Hall killer shooting has learned.
Officers facing Usman Khan had no training in how to distinguish a real from a fake suicide vest and have been instructed to treat all devices as real.
Chief Inspector Phil Taylor, Scotland Yard’s top firearms instructor, suggested that such a device could have been set off from “anywhere in the world” even after Khan was shot.
Gun officers had to kill Khan, eight minutes after being hit at point blank range, to allow paramedics to reach the injured inside the building, the officer told the inquest.
Operation Plato had been declared by the Metropolitan Police, which meant that there was a “hot zone” around Khan, and ambulance personnel would not pass through this area to treat the injured.
Khan stabbed Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, workers at a Cambridge University prisoner rehabilitation project during an event at Fishmongers’ Hall, before making their way to the London Bridge, wearing a fake suicide belt.
A “conventional shot” would be a “no” as it would require the officer to fire at the “main body mace” and that could set off the bomb, Mr Taylor said.
“What we are looking for is the immediate incapacity of the neurological function delivered by this shot, so we know for sure that they cannot achieve what they intended to do,” he said. he adds.
Jonathan Hough QC, for the coroner, asked, “So all brain messages stop and no determined action is possible?”
Jack Merrit and Saskia Jones were killed in Khan attack
Mr Taylor said the officer was taking a “head butt”, aimed at the elongated marrow, at the base of the brain, so that “the threat will then be …
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Source: news.sky.com
This notice was published: 2021-06-08 14:08:00
