British police guarding one of the gates to Westminster Parliament in central London fired a stun gun at a man who reached for a knife when they approached him on Friday. It was not initially being considered a terrorist incident.
A witness at the scene told Reuters the man, who police said was in his 30s, had run toward one of the gates.
“You could tell he was suspicious, he stood there fists clenched. He looked quite an angry geezer,” Bradley Allen, 19, told Reuters.
London police (MPS) said that at around 11 a.m. local time a man acting suspiciously started hanging around near one of the gates. Less than three months ago, at those very gates, a terrorist killed a policeman.
Police tased the man while other police trained their guns on him while he was restrained and put into a police van, witnesses at the scene told Reuters.
“The man reached for a knife,” police said in a statement. “At this time it is too early to understand the motivation so we have not declared this a terrorist incident. However given the location, the circumstances, and recent tragic events, the MPS Counter Terrorism Command will be investigating this incident.”
On March 22, a man drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four, and then stabbed a policeman to death on the grounds of Parliament. He was shot dead at the scene.
A suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, which killed 22, and a similar deadly attack on London Bridge earlier this month, have raised the profile of terrorism in the U.K.
Following the incident the gates to Parliament were closed briefly, but the area returned to normal shortly afterwards.
The area is one of the busiest tourist draws in central London and is typically crammed with people.
