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After sinking his six-inch knife into the abdomen of a 20-year-old student, Junior Henry turned on his heels and sprinted south, down Ladbroke Grove in the direction of the Westway underpass.
It was 5.55pm on August 29 and people had formed along the roadside to watch the preceding scuffle, but Henry managed to disappear into the drowsy late afternoon crowd, the bloody knife discarded onto the nearby pavement in the chase.
As his victim Rio Andre lay bleeding on the road, it seemed Notting Hill Carnival's "Murder Monday" might again have lived up to its name.
But the near-fatal stabbing at an event with a history of killings wouldn't have attracted headlines had it not been for a series of powerful photographs taken by Oli Scarff, a Getty photographer, which quickly went around the world.
A spokesman for the Met told the Standard the picture is the most powerful crime image they have seen. It certainly changed the lives of the key men in it.
For Valentine Simatchenko, the Ukrainian ex-policeman feted as a hero for trying to trip Henry, appearing in the picture led to tabloid questions over his past in Chechnya. The victim Rio Andre has had his account of being a wronged peacemaker challenged and has been visited by the press in his hospital bed.
Recently Henry began a four-and-a-half year sentence after a member of the public in Hammersmith recognised him from the picture. And today, the policeman who was accused of reacting slowly, Roger Webb, speaks for the first time.
Just over 100 days after the event, this is the story of what really happened.
The policeman
Pc Roger Webb was an unlikely man to be pursuing Junior Henry through the Notting Hill crowds. A 44-year-old officer from the rural north Wales near Caernarvon, Webb had been in London with his unit for four days, doing "public confidence" policing with the Met in Islington to reassure the public after the summer riots. He remembers the incident vividly.
"I was making a tactical assessment of a junction up the road, to work out if we should close some side streets," he told the Standard. "As we were walking back to the cordoned-off street where we were based, I heard a noise next to me which sounded bizarre - a scream and people scattering.
"I looked to my left just before the photo was taken. My attention was focused on a man who was waving a belt in what looked like a figure of eight, perhaps in self-defence.
"Then my eye caught the knife. I started to chase after him [Henry]. I saw the Russian man putting his foot out, which made Henry stumble. I remember him looking back, seeing us in our yellows and throwing the knife onto the ground, trying to discard it.
"I diverted my run to pick the knife up, and then chased him into the crowd. Unfortunately I lost sight of him because of the density of the crowd. It was only when I returned to my colleague that I saw the victim and realised the stabbing had happened. When I first picked up the knife I didn't know whose blood it was."
Webb didn't realise the photo had gone global until his van stopped for petrol the next day on the way back to Wales. "The guys were looking at the papers saying, 'You're in here, and here, and here, and here'. Then my phone started going and when I got home I saw myself on Sky News."
Responding to criticism that the picture showed him reacting slowly to the attack, Webb says the image is misleading and that it wasn't immediately clear what had happened. "On the internet people were being a bit critical, saying I was standing still watching, but that wasn't the case at all."
The victim
Computer Science student Rio Andre, 20, from Hornchurch, claims he was breaking up a fight when he was stabbed in the abdomen.
The photo shows blood seeping through his T-shirt seconds after the stabbing. Moments later he was lying in the road with paramedics working to save his life before being rushed to hospital where he spent five days undergoing operations for nerve and tendon
damage. Andre says he "could have died" after the attack and has criticised Henry's four-and-a-half-year sentence as "just not enough for a knife crime".
He is unlikely to return to the carnival next year: "I respect my parents too much and what they've been through hasn't been fair." In a victim statement he said he was suffering "flashbacks" of the attack.
The attacker
After escaping Pc Webb into the sea of carnival-goers, Junior Henry, 17, made the mistake of wearing the same blue scarf and was spotted by a member of the public. He was arrested at his home in Hammersmith the next day.
He was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison last month, after which it was revealed that he was acquitted of the murder of a student called Yasin Abdirahman in 2009. At the time he had been found guilty of conspiracy to cause GBH and violent disorder but avoided prison, being handed a supervision order instead.
Henry was just 12 in 2007 when he and nine older youths chanced upon Yasin, beat him with baseball bats, broken bottles and knives and stabbed him three times in the head as part of an initiation ceremony by the notorious MDP gang.
At the time of his attack on Andre in the summer, he was in breach of the resulting supervision order. His family were unavailable for comment.
The hero
Valentine Simatchenko, the 55-year-old Ukrainian man who stepped forward to trip Henry as those around him fled, has told the Standard he is now hoping to become a British citizen.
In the days after the picture appeared, Simatchenko was hailed as the "Chechen warrior" who had risked his life to stop Henry - a reference to the time he claims he spent working as a police officer in the troubled Russian republic in the Caucasus before arriving in London in 1996.
A week later his past was called into question, with one Sunday newspaper claiming he was dismissed from the St Petersburg police after being accused of two murders.
Simatchenko, whom the picture shows with a vuvuzela around his neck, says he won't talk about his past and didn't intend to get involved in the carnival.
"I went to the park with my family to read a book and relax. And it happened when I was on my way back. I only helped for 30 seconds, the police did a good job. I just put out my leg. I wasn't scared - this is life. Working as a policeman I had much bigger incidents. In Russia and Ukraine we have much bigger problems on the streets."
Far from being put off London by the incident, Simatchenko says he is in the process of naturalisation to gain British citizenship. "I'm very glad," he says. "It is very good for me. This is our future. We will never go to Russia again."
... and The photographer
Getty photographer Oli Scarff, 31, who earned no money from the picture because he is on staff, took the image after following a group of police officers sprinting to the incident. "I ran forward and it was hard to tell what was going on.
I just took a few pictures - there were lots of people shouting," he remembers. "It was only when I was editing them I noticed I had a shot of the chap running away with the knife. It's quite striking because of the relative scarcity of images like that. It's probably the best news image I've shot."
Reader views (11)
This is the reason why these kids should continue to be stopped and searched!
- ashlyn, London, 14/12/2011 16:05
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Why did he get only four and a half years???? He should have got life for attempted murder.
- Turner, beijing, 13/12/2011 08:54
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"junior" Henry should have been in prison when he committed this offence, judges, hold your heads in shame, because of you an innocent man almost died.
- The prophet of doom, UK Dustbin of Europe, 12/12/2011 17:59
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The world and his dog want to be English while the English are begining to wish they were some place else. Are we going to be allowed to keep this palce somewhere we want to stay ?
- Fulhamite, Fulham, 12/12/2011 16:50
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To "Well, well":Congratulations on your status as "Blockwart". Smear away at someone who tried to stop an upright British citizen, who showed his maturity, respect for Queen and country, and Britishness by plunging a 6 inch knife into somebody else. Frankly, I rather have Simatchenko as my neighbor than Henry. And I hope that Theresa May has better things to do than to listen to the claptrap of an uninformed smear campaigner.
- John Markham, New York, USA, 12/12/2011 15:27
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A supervision order for being part of a killing .. savages bringing a alien culture to my city .
- terry, london, 12/12/2011 15:25
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What does it say for a country and a justice system when a lout stabbing another person gets 4 1/2 years in jail, and someone robbing a bank gets 20 years (unless he's a bank executive, in which case he gets a bonus)? Life is cheap, and property is valued higher than human life. A sad state of affairs for a country that wishes to to be taken seriously.
- John Markham, New York, USA, 12/12/2011 15:24
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I am not embarrassed to be English but I am embarrassed at the people run our country.
- harvey, london, 12/12/2011 13:40
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Welcome to another none story, as its out there every day in London, time the rules where changed,
Hang Him!
- Ed, London, 12/12/2011 13:36
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Can it really be true that Simatchenko is on his way to becoming a British citizen? Surely enough doubt has been cast on his 'asylum' story for the Home Office to look into this affair. Simatchenko's mother, in Russia, declared he had never been anywhere near Chechnya where, presumably, he had also been a 'hero'. She gave exact details of how he was injured while working in a Russian factory and seemed disgusted that he had parlayed this into a asylum claim, claiming benefits and never doing a stroke of work since landing in London. If he's on the up-and-up, fine. But there's surely enough serious doubt to warrant a hold on any citizenship moves. Doesn't the fact that suddenly - after apparently years of boasting of his Chechenyan war exploits - he now refuses to discuss his past. Well, that shouldn't be good enough for the Home Office, should it? His asylum status if bogus should be rescinded if the facts do not support it and he should be charged for defrauding the government (i.e. us). Otherwise, we British taxpayers are simply being taken for mugs. Is Home Secretary Theresa May listening?
- Well, well..., Oxford, 12/12/2011 11:59
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Given Junior Henry's involvement in this crime and his past history, I do wonder what our pathetic CJS regards as serious enough to lock a man up for life with no chance of parole. Perhaps if they had done this after his first offence he wouldn't have been able to commit any further crimes.
- Adam, The Socialist Dictatorship, once known as Britain., 12/12/2011 11:50
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