First victim of London Bridge terror attack named
Cambridge University graduate Jack Merritt has been named as the first victim of the London Bridge terror attack.
The 25-year-old and another female victim were stabbed to death by Usman Khan, 28, on Friday.
Mr Merritt’s death was confirmed by his father David on Twitter.
He wrote: "My son, Jack, who was killed in this attack, would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily.
"R.I.P. Jack: you were a beautiful spirit who always took the side of the underdog."
Mr Merritt, from Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, was a course coordinator on Cambridge University’s Learning Together prisoner rehabilitation programme.
An event for the programme at Fishmongers’ Hall, near London Bridge, was attended by Khan and other prisoners on Friday.
Khan, who was armed with two knives and wearing a fake suicide vest, was tackled by members of the public (who were praised by the Queen) before he was shot dead by police on London Bridge next to the Hall.
He injured three other people in the attack that initially began in the hall.
Footage posted online shows Khan being taken to the ground as one man sprays him with a fire extinguisher and another, reportedly a Polish man who worked at the Fishmongers’ Hall, lunges towards him with a narwhal tusk believed to have been taken from the wall inside the building.
A plainclothes British Transport Police officer was pictured carrying a knife away from the scene.
It has also emerged one of the people who helped tackle Khan was James Ford, who was jailed in 2004 for the murder of 21-year-old Amanda Ford, who had the mental age of a 15-year-old.
It was confirmed Khan was a convicted terrorist released half-way through a 16-year prison sentence for a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange.
In February 2012, Khan, who had been based in Stoke-on-Trent, was handed an open-ended indeterminate sentence for public protection over his part in an al Qaida-inspired terror group that plotted to bomb the London Stock Exchange and build a terrorist training camp on land in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir owned by his family.
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A list of other potential targets included the names and addresses of the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, then London mayor Boris Johnson, two rabbis, and the American Embassy in London.
But the sentence for Khan, along with two co-conspirators, was quashed at the Court of Appeal in April 2013 and he was given a determinate 16-year jail term and freed on licence in December last year and made to wear the tag.
