On 11th October (the day the 7/7 Inquest began), ‘Huggles’ recalled how he had been at King’s Cross station when it all happened:

I was in Kings Cross right after the Piccadilly line blast and there was no problem calling into work to tell my boss that I would be late [a propos of whether mobile phones were working]. I then went into cafe to wait for the hubbub to die down. Over the radio we discovered that it was more than one bomb.

Just over an hour and a half later, there was a report on Radio 5 that some of the bombers were shot by armed response units in the Docklands. When I got home that evening, the news reports said that all the bombers died in the explosions.

The site owner Kevin Boyle asked him whether he had personally heard that Radio 5 news announcement, and ‘Huggles’ replied:

Kevin,

I heard it on the radio but when I got home and I sat in front of the tv for the rest of that evening, it was not repeated. It was in the cafe I heard the news report.

Is this the first mention of a Radio 5 news-announcement, on the 11 o’clock news that morning, of this shooting, at Canary Wharf in the Docklands, of maybe three young men? For comparison, British philosopher Rory Ridley-Duff at Sheffield compiled 17 accounts from the media of this event at Canary Wharf having happened. In addition there are a few more in Appendix 3 of my book. Does anyone else recall such a news-announcement that morning?

If you’re new to the Canary Wharf story, maybe watch the fifth chapter of Muad’Dib’s Ripple Effect. The story often comes with dramatic accounts of how the entire Wharf was ‘locked down’ and 8000 workers in the 44-storey tower were told to stay away from windows and remain in the building for ‘at least six hours.’ By the evening the police were trying to dismiss the whole thing.

For comparison, here is a fairly well-known version of the story, reported Down Under:

A New Zealander working for Reuters in London says two colleagues witnessed the unconfirmed shooting by police of two apparent suicide bombers outside the HSBC tower at Canary Wharf in London. The New Zealander, who did not want to be named, said the killing of the two men wearing bombs happened at 10.30am on Thursday (London time).

If it happened, it was an operation ‘Kratos’ job, whereby certain senior police officers are (shockingly) permitted to shoot a member of the public in the head, if they are deemed  to be a ‘suicide bomber’ and about to blow themselves up. Thus the above report has the two people shot because they were ‘wearing bombs’ – that judgement is necessary for a Kratos shooting to take place –  compare the De Menezes shooting where early accounts had him with a ‘bulging’ raincoat as if they were trying to make out they thought he might be ‘wearing bombs’ as their excuse for shooting him in the head on 22 July 2005 at Stockwell tube station.

Danish News Report on the Day

The search  by Ridley-Duff using Nexis UK, a database used by universities to research news stories, omitted the following.  ‘TV2/News’ is a Danish national TV channel that runs their own news department, producing news for both TV and the internet. At 5 pm on 7.7.05 it published the following (in Danish):

Eyewitnesses: Two men shot in London

TV 2/NEWS have just spoken with Marianne Jørgensen who is employed by
the Access Flooring Company in London. She has learned through
co-workers in the company that two suspected suicide-bombers have been
shot and killed at Canary Wharf.

“They called one of our presidents and told him that they have witnessed
two men being shot – deliberately, by police or soldiers”, Marianne
Jørgensen told to TV 2/NEWS. The police however denied at a press
conference having received information about anyone being shot.

So this important news announcement gave both an eyewitness account and the subsequent denial by Brian Paddick of the Metropolitan police. (Thanks to Timothy for info) Let’s note Paddick’s careful words (at a press meeting at 1.45 GMT)-

Can you tell me — the rumors that a police sniper shot dead a suicide bombter at Canary Wharf — do you know anything about that?”
Paddick responded:
“We have no reports of any police sniper shooting at anybody today.”

So this statement was not quite as the Danish news report had it: Paddick stated (truthfully) not that he had no information about anyone being shot, but no information about his police force shooting anyone, that morning. NB that news announcement was broadcast on CNN’s morning news in the US, but not on British news channels that day.

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