A survivor of the Hainault samurai sword rampage has told Sky News of the moment that attacker Marcus Arduini Monzo looked him in the eye and said: “I’m going to kill you”.
Donato Iwule recalled his “escape from death” after Monzo was found guilty on Wednesday of charges including one count of murder and three counts of attempted murder following the attack in east London on 30 April last year.
Among the victims was 14-year-old schoolboy Daniel Anjorin, who died of his injuries.
Mr Iwule was the first person to be attacked during the 20-minute rampage, which he described as being like a “horror movie”.
He was on his way to work when Monzo drove his grey Ford Transit van into him at speed.
The attacker then leapt out of the vehicle and slashed the young father in the neck, before running off.
Mr Iwule told Sky News correspondent Ashna Hurynag he remembered being “on the floor” for a short time after being hit and then looked up to see Monzo.
“I saw this guy and I went to him, I said: ‘Are you okay?’ He didn’t talk to me. He was angry and said: ‘I need to kill’. I was like ‘Huh?’
“I said to him: ‘Are you okay?’ Then the next thing I saw was a samurai sword… I took a step back and said: ‘What are you doing? Hello?’ And he was like: ‘I’m going to kill you, yeah, yeah’.”
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Mr Iwule said he then got to his feet and tried to move away as Monzo began swinging his sword around.
“He came again and that’s when I turned my eye, to see where I am, in case there were two or three [other attackers]… I looked at my back for a split second and I saw out of the corner of my eye, he was trying to swing. So I, kind of, moved back and this way he caught me right in my neck.
“When he caught me, straight away I panicked for a couple of seconds.”
However, Mr Iwule said he recalled the words of his cousin, a doctor, about injuries, and used his thumb and jumpers to put pressure on the wound to stem the bleeding.
He said hospital staff later told him he could have died in less than a minute due to the severity of his injuries.
“He thought that he won. But he didn’t… I was supposed to be dead,” he added.
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Mr Iwule said his life flashed before his eyes during the incident and he was left traumatised for months afterwards.
“I wasn’t even going out, I was even scared to stay at my own house. I had to stay with my mum and have some sleepless nights because, for the past six to five months, I was reliving the same moment every single day,” he said.
Mr Iwule added he was “relieved” his attacker had now been convicted.
Monzo, 37, will be sentenced on Friday.
