The London Bridge attackers stabbed a man when he unknowingly went to check they were OK after their van crashed into railings, an inquest has heard.

Richard Livett, one of the first people to be knifed by the assailants, said he had been looking for a place to get a drink or food in the London Bridge area after watching the Champions League final in a pub on 3 June 2017.

He told the inquest into the deaths of eight people in the attack that he was first alerted to the van’s presence when his brother-in-law shouted “watch out”.

Livett turned around and saw a van heading directly towards him, the Old Bailey heard on Tuesday. He dived out of the way and the vehicle crashed into railings close to him. He said he went to check if anyone inside was hurt.

“I thought it was just an accident,” he said. “[Maybe] something happened to the driver. I didn’t know it was a terrorist attack … The next sight that greeted me was a man ran straight on, right into my face and screamed: ‘Allahu Akbar.’”

Livett said the man, who he believes was Khuram Butt, 27, had his nose inches from his face. “I felt what I thought was a punch in my back, which obviously turned out to be him flailing his arm around the back of me and stabbing me,” he said. “I just felt an impact initially but he withdrew it [the knife] downwards and then I realised what had happened.”

The court heard that Livett slumped down after the stabbing and then struggled up as it dawned on him that he was in the midst of a terrorist attack. He described chaotic scenes as he embarked on a “personal mission” to reach safety.

“There was screaming and shouting, people were running all over the place,” Livett told the court. He said he tried to get into a couple of buildings for assistance but they were already in lockdown. He eventually made it to the Globe Tavern on Bedale Street, where they would not let him in but agreed to phone an ambulance.

He recalled lying face down on the cobbles being helped by an off-duty doctor, a soldier and two women who had come out of the pub.

Livett told the court that with assistance he eventually retraced his steps, past people lying in the middle of the road and victims covered with blankets.

The panicked scenes he described were also evident in a statement read to the court from Robin Colleau, a friend of two of the victims, Alexandre Pigeard and Sébastien Bélanger, whom Colleau had met for drinks that evening.

Colleau said that as he ran for his life he saw Pigeard lying on the ground. “There was blood all around him. He looked at me as I passed and said: ‘Robin, please help me, my neck is open.’ I stopped for a moment. I told him: ‘I am sorry, I have to run away because there is someone stabbing people behind us.’”

Rasak Kalenikanse, who was on duty as a doorman at the Barrowboy and Banker pub on the night of the attack, broke down as he recounted seeing two victims, believed to have been Pigeard and Bélanger.

Kalenikanse said he was looking over the bridge railings and saw one man below, probably Pigeard, staggering with a wound to his neck in the courtyard outside Boro Bistro, and then another, Bélanger, approaching from the restaurant.

He said he shouted “go back” to the second man but he did not respond. The man was then stabbed in the stomach by one attacker and fell into flowerpots before the other two terrorists joined in, stabbing him several times, Kalenikanse said.

The doorman said an attacker wearing an Arsenal shirt, since identified as Butt, appeared to be the ringleader, and he recounted him shouting: “Unbelievers, we are doing this for the cause of Allah.”

As he continued to shout warnings from above, Kalenikanse said, the terrorists spotted him. “They charged towards me. I ran back to my bar and then locked the door,” he said.

The other people killed in the attack were Chrissy Archibald, 30, from Canada; Kirsty Boden, 28, a nurse from Australia; Ignacio Echeverría Miralles De Imperial, 39, a financial analyst from Spain; 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 national.

The other attackers were Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22.

The inquest continues.