Met officer who killed Jean Charles de Menezes says he was ‘convinced we were all about to die’

The officer and a colleague, C2, ran to the platform, where he saw a foot sticking out of one of the carriage doorways.

“I recognized the technology and I immediately looked at him and got on board. I assumed it was a security guard. I had never seen this person before, and that was true.

“As soon as I took a step on that subway car, he turned around and pointed to a person sitting in the opposite corner and said, ‘That’s him.’ At this stage, things happen very, very, very quickly.

“As soon as that supervisor identified this man and pointed at him, that person stood up. But it was the way he stood up that triggered something in my head that wasn’t right. His hands hovered almost above his knees, and when he stood up he didn’t use anything to push himself off the chair or anything like that.

“He just stood up, immediately turned to the right, where we were, and came towards us.”

‘We were all going to die’

The officer grabbed his gun and shouted, “armed police‘ and the supervisor subsequently detained Mr De Menezes again.

He recalled: ‘I expected an explosion at any moment. It’s going to explode, we’re going to die. That’s the gist of it.

“If I don’t do something now, we’re all going to die – the audience, everyone. I was one hundred percent convinced that we were all going to die. I knew I had to take that photo.

“When we finished shooting, there was a deafening silence and a real silence and I remember thinking, ‘I have to make sure you’re dead,’ and so I took half a step back and fired another shot . I didn’t see any movement and just thought, ‘We stopped this bomb from going off.’”