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Her family remembered her Sunday for her work with the homeless. According to a LinkedIn profile in her name, she had a degree in social work from Mount Royal University and worked at a shelter after graduation.

“She would have had no understanding of the casual cruelty that caused her death,” her family said. “Please honour her by making her community a better place. Volunteer your time and labour or donate to a homeless shelter. Tell them Chrissy sent you.”

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Saturday’s attack came just two weeks after 22 people, including many children, were slaughtered at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester and days before a scheduled British election that polls suggest may be much tighter than originally expected. It struck a country balanced now more than ever between performative nonchalance and aggressive, bigoted overreaction.

According to eyewitness accounts, the carnage started just after 10 p.m. on the legendary London Bridge and carried on into the adjacent Borough Market, a popular restaurant and tourist district. Witnesses described seeing a white van travelling about 80 km/h barrel across the bridge, mount a sidewalk and thump into a crowd of pedestrians crossing the Thames River.

Three men emerged from the van, carrying knives. At least one, according to witnesses, had a machete. In a violent spate that lasted mere minutes, they slashed their way through the streets, causing chaos, but meeting resistance, too.

A Romanian chef told the Associated Press he hit one of the attackers on the head with a crate before sheltering about 20 bystanders in the bakery where he works.

An off-duty police officer, a rugby player in his private life, was stabbed and left in critical condition after tackling one of the attackers.

Another witness, identified by the BBC as Gerard Vowls, said he threw “bottles at them, pint glasses, stools, chairs” — in a bid to stop the rampage. “But at the end of the day, I was defenceless, mate. If I’d a fell over, they’d of probably killed me.”

Armed police officers were on the scene within moments. On Sunday, London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said officers fired more than 50 rounds, killing all three assailants just eight minutes after the first emergency call came in.

In total, at least 48 people were reported injured and seven killed, not including the attackers.

As doctors and nurses tended to the wounded, police carried out raids in the east London neighborhood of Barking in a signal that authorities are probing at least the possibility that others may have been involved in the attack’s planning. A dozen people were arrested, police said.

But authorities did not raise the nation’s threat level, as they had after a bombing in Manchester last month, suggesting they believe that all the main London plotters have been killed.