'I'll run marathon for docs who saved my life,' says hero cop who fought off London Bridge terror attackers
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When off-duty policeman Charlie Guenigault saw three knife-wielding jihadis in suicide vests attacking another officer at London Bridge last year , his first instinct was to run away.
Faced with such terror, most of us would probably feel the same.
But what marks Charlie out as a hero is that he ignored his “flight” instinct and instead stayed to fight, risking his own life to save another’s.
He was so badly injured taking on the killers that he had to undergo five operations over 10 weeks to save his lungs and stomach at King’s College Hospital in South East London.
Now, eight months on, he has returned for the first time to the scene of the atrocity last June 3 – with a vow to raise as much money as possible for the hospital that saved his life.
Having run towards danger last year, he will run to save lives again on April 22 in the Virgin London Marathon.
“I completely owe my life to the NHS ,” he says. “I want to give as much as I can back to them. I’m running for King’s because I want to show how much our doctors and NHS and all the staff do to help us, and the support they need.”
(Image: Getty)
Such selflessness seems typical of Charlie, 26. The Metropolitan Police constable was walking home from the pub with friends on his day off when he saw a uniformed British Transport Police officer being attacked by Khuram Shazad Butt, ­Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba.
As a policeman in South East London, Charlie had seen plenty of Saturday night brawls, and at first he thought this was just more of the same.
He says: “When I saw the officer, at first I thought it was just a fight.
(Image: Daily Mirror)
“I thought: ‘I’ll give him a couple of seconds to get his police spray out or something to protect himself.’”
But the true horror of the situation quickly became clear. “There were three of them standing in front of him with knives and with vests on,” he says.
“I thought: ‘This isn’t games. This is something different.’ It’s never something you expect to happen. You expect a pub fight on a Saturday night – you don’t expect a terrorist attack.”
(Image: Getty)
The three thugs had stormed across London Bridge in a van, driving into pedestrians before rampaging through nearby Borough Market slashing innocent passers-by using kitchen knives tied to their wrists with leather straps.
Charlie says: “My natural reaction was to run away, of course. Even with my police training, it’s a natural reaction. But I wanted to try and help others. I got to the situation in my head where I was like, ‘I’ve made this decision to stay, so I’m going to do what I can to help.’”
(Image: Daily Mirror)
Charlie nearly died after being stabbed in the head, neck, back, stomach and leg as he stood up to the killers. It was perhaps his police training that saved him from worse injury.
He knew how to block his face and to move his head back to avoid being stabbed in the eye.
But Charlie does not believe it was his training that motivated him to go into danger to help others that night.
(Image: Daily Mirror)
“Even as a civilian, I would have gone over to help the man who had been stabbed,” he says. “But everything else that came after, I probably wouldn’t have known what to do.
“It probably helped to save my life.”
Eight people were killed and 48 injured in the atrocity before the attackers were shot dead by police.
The authorities reckon Charlie’s bravery stopped more being killed.
The attack came just three months after five people were killed in a similar vehicle-ramming atrocity in Westminster, and less than two weeks after the Manchester Arena bombing.
Charlie of Bexley, South East London, was the first person attacked to be taken to hospital that night. “I was at King’s in five to 10 minutes,” he says. “A few minutes more would have been the difference between life and death.”
He had a three-hour op to remove his spleen and was in a coma for three days. He then spent 70 days in hospital having five operations to save his lungs and repair a hole in his stomach.
At the Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain awards in association with TSB last October, Charlie won the Outstanding Bravery honour with Wayne Marques, a fellow officer who was on duty at the scene of the attack, and PC Keith Palmer , who was killed at Westminster.
The award was presented by Prime Minister Theresa May, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Lib Dem chief Vince Cable in a show of unity that reflected the country’s pride in the police heroes.
In the month before the ceremony – just three months after his ordeal at London Bridge – Charlie had already started training for the marathon.
Continuing health problems mean he has been unable to return to work. He still has to take penicillin twice a day after the removal of his spleen, and he still bears the scars from that night..
(Image: Daily Mirror)
But now, returning to the scene of the attack, he insists he is one of the lucky ones. He says: “I don’t suffer any flashbacks, I think because I remember every detail. That’s probably a good thing.”
He previously ran the marathon last year, finishing in 4hrs and 20mins, but this year will be an extra challenge.
He hopes it will help him recover so he can return to duty. “I think the doctors are quite happy for me to do it as it helps my rehabilitation,” he says.
“It is going to be a bigger challenge than last year – I still have some internal injuries and bruising from surgery, which still causes me pain.
(Image: PA)
“The training has been much harder, but there is the motivation, of course, to do it – to raise money for King’s.”
Looking back at his actions that night, he admits it seems rushing into danger like that “wasn’t the best idea”.
But he adds: “If I didn’t do anything, what could have happened? The thought of not doing anything is worse than doing something.
“If I’m going in there to save someone else’s life, then that’s what I’ll do. I don’t have any regrets. I’m just glad to be alive.”