A French waiter killed in the London Bridge terror attacks told a nurse who tried to help him to save herself as he was being stabbed by a smiling assailant, an inquest has heard.

Alexandre Pigeard, 26, was stabbed twice after he went to see what had happened when the terrorists’ van crashed into railings on Borough High Street, above Boro Bistro, on 3 June 2017.

Helen Kennett, a nurse, was celebrating her birthday with her sister and mother-in-law at the restaurant, below street level, when a loud bang was followed by people rushing down the steps from above.

She said she initially thought there had been an accident and saw three “frantic” men – the attackers – who she thought had been caught up in the crash, before seeing a man, now known to be Pigeard, bleeding profusely.

“I thought he’d been injured in the car crash and that the man standing behind him had dragged him downstairs so we could help him,” Kennett told the Old Bailey on Thursday. She said that as she got closer, she saw he had a cut to the neck. “All of a sudden my [mind]set changed. I looked at his injuries, I looked at the man, I saw the knife … I didn’t see the arm he was holding him with, but he had another arm up in the air [ready to strike].”

Kennett said that she reached out to help Pigeard and said: “Let me help you, I’m a nurse.” She told the inquest: “He shook his head … I am sure he told me to run.” She recounted the eyes of the terrorist being “completely soulless, empty,” as she exchanged words with him before she too was stabbed.

“I looked at him and I said: ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And he looked at me and said: ‘No, what’s wrong with you?’ Before I could process what I was seeing happening … he stabbed me in the neck on the left side.”

Kennett said she felt a sensation like warm water gushing over her and realised she had been stabbed, while in her peripheral vision she could see the two other terrorists jumping over a bush and attacking people.

She wept as she told the court that she was sure she was going to die. “But I didn’t want to die there, I wanted to die around the corner with my family,” said Kennett. She made it to the safety of the Mudlark pub but has no recollection of how she got there.

Kennett broke down in tears at the end of her evidence and was embraced at length by Pigeard’s father as she left the witness box.

Andzelika Abokaityte, who was also at the Boro Bistro, celebrating a friend’s birthday, said she saw Pigeard, who had been serving at her table minutes earlier, being stabbed twice a few feet from where she sat.

She said of the attacker: “He looked evil and he was smiling. He was holding the waiter and he was stabbing him from behind.”

Reading parts of her statement given shortly after the attacks, Gareth Patterson QC said Abokaityte had told police that the terrorist stabbing Pigeard was looking around as if trying to identify his next victim. He quoted her as saying: “I remember thinking I was going to die.” Patterson asked her: “Is that why you ran?” Abokaityte replied: “Yes.”

Abokaityte said that just after telling a friend to run: “I looked again, I’m not sure if it was the same person, and I saw him slicing his neck.” Patterson suggested it may have been Kennett she had seen being stabbed.



Geoffrey Huet, who was at Boro Bistro with a friend celebrating the end of exams, said he saw a man he has since identified as Rachid Redouane, 30, on top of Pigeard “killing Alex or finishing him off”.

Pigeard’s colleague Dmitri Gabriel told the court that after the van crashed, he and Pigeard moved towards the steps leading up to Borough High Street to see what had happened, his co-worker a few steps in front of him, but Gabriel turned back after he heard screaming.

“The last words he said to me were: ‘Let’s go up and see what happened, maybe it’s an accident on the bridge,” said Gabriel.

A few minutes later Gabriel was back outside the restaurant. “Alex was just lying in front of the restaurant; there were people treating him,” he said.

The other seven people killed were Chrissy Archibald, 30, from Canada, Sebastien Belanger, 36, a chef, Kirsty Boden, 28, a nurse from Australia, Ignacio Echeverría Miralles De Imperial, 39, James McMullan, 32, the only Briton, who was from Brent, north-west London, Xavier Thomas, 45, a French national, and Sara Zelenak, 21, an Australian.

The inquest continues.