London Bridge inquest: Woman whose boyfriend was killed ‘had premonition of terror attack’

A woman who was walking alongside her boyfriend when he was killed by terrorists on London Bridge has said she had a “premonition” about an attack.

Christine Delcros broke down as she told an inquest how she and Xavier Thomas, 45, had arrived for a holiday in London earlier on 3 June 2017 from France.

Mr Thomas wanted to walk from their hotel, near the Tower of London, to have a cocktail in the Shard.

“Just before we reached the bridge I told him ... we had to go somewhere else,” Ms Delcros told the Old Bailey, speaking through an interpreter. “I had so many premonitions about terror attacks from the day before and I could feel it.

“But I did not tell him, in fact, and to please me he started searching on his phone for another place but it is late now.

“He said, ‘That’s OK, it’s a magnificent view,’ and he had planned everything properly accordingly and not to disappoint him I said OK.

“I just called my daughter and he has a younger son so he called his son and after that we went. After that I do not remember at the time of the van.”

The inquest has been played CCTV footage of the couple walking onto London Bridge, holding hands, minutes before terrorists ploughed a hired van into pedestrians.

The pair were seen strolling near the edge of the bridge as the vehicle came up behind them and mounted the pavement.

Ms Delcros said she remembered being on the bridge and had the feeling that something was “not normal”.

“Suddenly I was under the impression there was a lot of light and a van that mounted the pavement in the exact fashion to make sure they were not going to miss us.”

Mr Thomas, a father-of-two, was thrown into the River Thames and Ms Delcros was severely injured.

Crying, she told the court: “I thought that I had died … I have no recollection of the crash.”

Ms Delcros remembered a man coming to help her holding her head as she regained consciousness.

“I asked, ‘Where’s Xavier?’,” she said, recalling extreme pain. “He tried to look for him but he could not find him. I ordered him to look for him.”

Ms Delcros said she was still “madly in love with Xavier”, who was the first of eight victims killed in the van and knife rampage.

Mr Thomas and Canadian Christine Archibald, 30, were struck by the van, before the terrorists fatally stabbed Alexandre Pigeard, 26, Sara Zelenak, 21, Kirsty Boden, 28, Sebastien Belanger, 36, James McMullan, 32, and Ignacio Echeverria, 39.

The rampage only ended when armed police shot the three terrorists dead, 10 minutes after they mounted the pavement on London Bridge.

BBC journalist Holly Jones said she checked the water for signs of Mr Thomas after helping Ms Delcros.

She said she saw the “demented” driver, believed to be Youssef Zaghba, speeding towards her after she walked past the French couple.

“I remember being stood frozen in fear,” Ms Jones said. “Something in the back of my mind told me to get out of the way. I jumped to the right towards the railings.

“At that point the van went past me. I could feel the wind of the van directly behind.”

Ms Jones said she remembered the French couple who looked “very happy together” on the bridge and saw Ms Delcros on the pavement.

“Those who did this try to separate us but they did the opposite,” she added. “We are not victims of terror, we are survivors.”

A man who was taking photographs from London Bridge told the inquest he saw a “commotion” with screams and shouts coming from the northern end.

Mark Roberts estimated that the hired Hertz van was travelling at 30mph or 40mph when it started “deliberately steering and aiming at people”.

“I realised this is not an accident,” he added. “It started driving along the pavement towards me. There was one group of people, which included [Ms Delcros and Mr Thomas], 20 yards away.

“I was thinking I should find some cover and I looked around and there was not really anywhere to go so I was frozen to the spot.”

Mr Roberts said he thought he was “next in line”, but suddenly the van steered away towards a large group of people and threw a woman into the air “like a rag doll”.

Gareth Patterson QC, representing six of the victims’ families, questioned whether barriers which were installed on London Bridge after the attack would have saved Mr Thomas and Ms Archibald.

The lawyer said that two months after a hire car was used in the Westminster attack, “there wasn’t a single additional obstacle that had been placed in the path of any terrorist trying to get their hands yet again on a rental vehicle”.

Mr Patterson said it only took an hour of phone calls for another of the attackers, Khuram Butt, to hire the van from Hertz, even though the known Islamist had been under investigation by both MI5 and counterterror police.

Dominic Adamson, a lawyer representing Mr Thomas’s family, questioned why he was not rescued from the River Thames on the night of the attack.

The inquest heard that marine police unit searched the water after witnesses reported a person being thrown in, but did not find anyone.

Mr Thomas’s body was found downstream three days later and his cause of death was found to be immersion in water.

The inquest heard that a marine police boat arrived three minutes after receiving reports of a person in the water and conducted a “hasty search”.

The vessel was diverted from the river search and helped an injured woman at a riverside pub after concluding that Mr Thomas was “probably lost”, but three lifeboats continued looking.

PC Nicholas Bultitude said: “I carried out a search of the river and I was satisfied if anyone was in the river floating on the surface in the vicinity of London Bridge we would have found it.

“When I made the decision, so far as I was concerned, if someone has gone in then tragically they are lost. I made the decision to depart from it.”

Mr Adamson questioned the decision but PC Bultitude insisted the “unfortunately named” hasty search was “not shoddy in any way”.

“We covered every inch of that river in a desperate attempt to recover anyone in there,” he added.

Ben Hayday, senior coastguard officer, told the court there were four vessels involved in the structured search and he was “comfortable” with releasing one.

Additional reporting by PA