Karker Tahir, who works in a local barber shop, told Sky News:

"It was this afternoon in the time I was working at my barber shop and suddently this guy he was walking and basically running on the pavement with a sort of vest on or something, I don't know exactly what it was.

"And then there were a few police officers with a guy and they kept saying to him 'stop, stop'.

"It was quite a shock, then they had to shoot him more than two or three times.

"This thing happened here in Streatham, I would never expect that.

"It's quite frightening and shocking. But thanks to the armed police response that was here on time and everything was in control.

"After they shot him down they had to say leave immediately because he has some, I don't know, maybe bomb or something, and then you have to evacuate.

"There were a lot of people, a lot of kids around, on a Sunday this high street is a very busy area.

"After that, I have seen that the police in police uniform walked to the body and this is when he sees he has something on it and this is when he says to us we have to leave and evacuate the entire street, we immediately left the area.

"They said this was an armed police officer with uniform, he came after the undercover police who was already at the scene and said we had to leave the place. It was like a movie, it was so quick, it was a panic.

"He had like sort of a vest, but I wouldn't know what was in the vest, it was a light colour.

"When he was shot he was still alive two or three minutes, he was looking up and down but no one could get close to him because of what he was carrying on him.

"He was alive for at least two three minutes and he put his head up and unfortunately nobody wanted to get closer because he had a vest."