"This is courage of the highest order, it sounds as if these members of the public are not soldiers, not policemen, not people whose duties demand this..."

"... they are extremely courageous people and that courage deserves to be recognised at the highest level."

As the police took 20 minutes to arrive, some women did extraordinary things.

Mrs Loyau-Kennett was a passenger on a number 53 bus which was travelling past the scene, and jumped off to check the soldier’s pulse.

“Being a cub leader I have my first aid so when I saw this guy on the floor I thought it was an accident then I saw the guy was dead and I could not feel any pulse. And then when I went up there was this black guy with a revolver and a kitchen knife, he had what looked like butcher’s tools and he had a little axe, to cut the bones, and two large knives and he said 'move off the body’.

“So I thought 'OK, I don’t know what is going on here’ and he was covered with blood. I thought I had better start talking to him before he starts attacking somebody else. I thought these people usually have a message so I said 'what do you want?’... I started to talk to him and I started to notice more weapons and the guy behind him with more weapons as well. By then, people had started to gather around. So I thought OK, I should keep him talking to me before he noticed everything around him...."

Would you jump off a bus in this situation? Would you engage an apparent murderer in conversation in the hope of distracting him from other people?