Release date
British police on Monday charged a 32-year-old man with attempted murder over a mass stabbing on a train that injured 11 people, and said he also tried to kill someone at a London transport station earlier in the day.
British Transport Police said Anthony Williams had been charged with 10 counts of attempted murder, one count of assault and one count of possessing a knife over Saturday’s attack.
Police said he was also charged with attempted murder over the incident, which occurred just before 1am (2am CET) at London’s Pontoon Dock light rail station, in which the victim was “attacked with a knife and suffered facial injuries” by the assailant, who fled the scene.
Police said investigators are “looking into the possibility of other related crimes.”
Police say they are not treating the train stabbing as an act of terrorism and are not looking for other suspects.
A second man, 35, who was initially arrested as a suspect, was released without charge on Sunday after it was determined he was not involved.
Ms Williams, a British national from the eastern English city of Peterborough, appeared briefly at Peterborough Magistrates’ Court on Monday.
Williams, wearing a gray prison jersey and handcuffed in the courtroom, was flanked by four guards and ordered to remain in custody until his next hearing on December 1.
He was not asked to enter a plea.
A stabbing that lasted several minutes on a train from Doncaster in northern England to London on Saturday evening sparked fear and panic.
The train was about halfway through its journey and had just left the Peterborough stop. Police began receiving calls about a person being stabbed inside a car.
Passengers described panicked scenes as bloodied travelers rushed the train to escape the knifeman.
Eleven people were treated in hospital. The most seriously injured victim was one of the railway employees who tried to stop the attacker. Police called his actions “nothing short of heroic.”
He is in serious but stable condition. The other four victims remained hospitalized Monday.
Williams was arrested when a train came to an emergency stop in the eastern English town of Huntingdon. Police said he was taken into custody within eight minutes after officers received the initial emergency call.
Authorities said the attack was an isolated incident, but security was stepped up on the railways on Monday, with armed police patrolling major stations.
The Government has rejected calls to introduce airport-style passenger and baggage checks at the UK’s 3,500 train stations as “not disproportionate or practical”.
In the UK, which has strict gun control laws, knives or other sharp instruments are used in almost half of all murders.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s centre-left government has pledged to reduce knife crime, tightening rules around knife purchases and banning certain types of knives.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the number of knife murders fell by more than 20% in the year to March 2025 compared to the previous 12 months, claiming that some progress had been made.
Additional sources of information • AP
