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‘Menezes was sitting still when officers shot him without a warning’
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent30 Oct 2008
JEAN CHARLES DE MENEZES was sitting still on the Tube train when he was shot dead by police without warning, a commuter who witnessed the shooting said today.
The 27-year-old Brazilian looked “as if he was waiting for somebody to tell him what was going on,” the inquest into his death at the Oval heard.
There was nothing to indicate that gunmen who opened fire at point-blank range were “police or terrorists or anybody else” the witness claimed.
Ralph Livock, who was in the same carriage as Mr de Menezes, said that he at first thought the four armed policemen who stormed onto the Northern line train at Stockwell station “were lads having a laugh in bad taste”.
He described how Mr de Menezes was surrounded by three of the armed men who shot him without shouting “armed police” after the Brazilian moved his left hand towards his waistband.
Mr Livock's girlfriend Rachel Wilson was sitting opposite the Brazilian and was covered in blood as seven shots were fired before the couple fled the carriage. Miss Wilson also said she heard no police warning before the shots.
The pair's version of events contradicts police accounts of the shooting.
Last week C12, the police marksman who opened fire first on Mr de Menezes, said the suspect had been walking towards him and that he had shouted a “armed police”. Mr Livock and his girlfriend were reading reports of the 21/7 attack in the Metro newspaper while the train was stopped when the armed officers entered the carriage.
He said: “Mr de Menezes was looking as if he was expecting somebody to say something. He didn't look frightened. He looked as if he was waiting for somebody to tell him what was going on.
“I had absolutely no idea who they [the police] were. They had no identifying caps. One of my initial thoughts was that it was all a game and they were a group of lads just having a laugh, in very bad taste.
“The thing that made me realise this was not a group of lads playing around was when a shot was fired. The first armed man fired into Mr de Menezes's head with his firearm about one foot away from his head.”
Mr Livock began to flee the carriage when he heard two more shots. “I turned around to check that Rachel had decided, same as me, to go but I saw her sitting in her seat and I saw Mr de Menezes slumped with a lot of blood. He was slumped partly in his seat to his left. I saw more shots being fired at him.” The couple ran off the train with other passengers.
The inquest continues.
