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The police are examining whether the suspect in the stabbing spree on a London-bound train on Saturday was connected to three other incidents involving a knife.
Nov. 3, 2025, 12:03 p.m. ET
British authorities are investigating whether a man charged with attempting to kill 10 people on a London-bound train Saturday night was also involved in several episodes the day before, including an attack on a 14-year-old and two instances of wielding a knife in public.
The man, Anthony Williams, a 32-year-old British citizen from Peterborough, was charged on Monday with 11 counts of attempted murder after Saturday’s stabbing rampage on the train and an earlier attack at a London train station.
The attack on Saturday night led to 11 people being taken to the hospital with serious injuries. Hours earlier, the separate attack in London left one person with facial injuries, the police said.
Mr. Williams has been charged in connection with both episodes, the Crown Prosecution Service said, though they did not provide details about Mr. Williams’ movements on Saturday or whether the police had been looking for him.
Then on Monday afternoon, the police raised the possibility that more incidents were connected.
Cambridgeshire police said that a 14-year-old was stabbed by a man in Peterborough city center, about two hours north of London, at 7:15 p.m. on Friday evening, but the suspect was not apprehended despite a police search aided by dogs. The teenager was taken to hospital with minor injuries. Fifteen minutes later, a man with a knife was seen in front of a nearby barbershop, but the incident was not reported to police until two hours later.
The next morning, at around 9:25 a.m., the same man was seen at the barbershop again, the police said. Officers arrived at the scene 18 minutes later but failed to find him.
The British Transport Police said it had now taken over investigating the three incidents, along with the two attacks on Saturday.
“We are treating the two incidents in the barber shop as linked, and making enquiries into the one with the 14-year-old,” the police said in a statement.
The suggestion that there could be a connection between the stabbing of the 14-year-old on Friday and the attacks on Saturday raises questions about how the police handled the incidents and what steps were taken to apprehend the suspect.
The attack on the moving train, which occurred just after 7:30 p.m. Saturday evening, took place more than 70 miles away from the earlier attack at Pontoon Dock DLR train station in London.
The Transport Police said in a statement that officers had responded to the incident at the London station at 12:46 a.m. on Saturday, and that a person suffered facial injuries after being targeted by a man wielding a knife. Mr. Williams was later identified as the suspect in the attack.
Officials said they did not believe that the attack on Saturday evening, which forced the train to make an emergency stop, was terrorism related.
“At this stage, there is nothing to suggest that this is a terrorist incident,” John Loveless, the superintendent of the British Transport Police, said, adding: “At this early stage, it would not be appropriate to speculate on the causes.”
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The police initially arrested two men in connection with the train attack, but said later that one of them was not involved and had been pointed out by witnesses erroneously.
Of the 11 who were injured, five have been discharged from the hospital but one remained in critical but stable condition on Monday morning, according to the British transport secretary, Heidi Alexander. The police identified that person as a member of the staff of the London North Eastern Railway who was on board during the attack and tried to stop the assailant.
“Detectives have reviewed the CCTV from the train and it is clear his actions were nothing short of heroic and undoubtedly saved many people’s lives,” the British Transport Police said in a statement.
The attack was the latest in a string of recent stabbings in Britain. Last month, a man attacked worshipers at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur, killing one person and wounding several others. And a 22-year-old man was charged with murder and attempted murder last week after a triple stabbing in a west London suburb that killed a man walking his dog.
Officials reported more than 53,000 knife-related crimes in the last year in England and Wales, slightly lower than the year before and a little higher than some previous years. About half those cases involved assaults with intent to harm, threats to kill or attempted murder. The number of those crimes have remained relatively stable over the last five years, the records show.
Among the injured in Saturday’s train attack was Jonathan Gjoshe, a player for the Scunthorpe United soccer team, the team confirmed in a statement. The team said Mr. Gjoshe sustained “non-life-threatening” injuries but remains in the hospital.
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Witnesses on the train described frantic moments of horror unfolding as the train sped toward London.
Olly Foster, a passenger, described the scene to the BBC and in a post on X.
“We ran from the back of the train to the end as everyone was screaming to run, explaining there was somebody stabbing everyone and everything,” Mr. Foster wrote. “There was blood on the top of countless chairs, coming from two of the guys who had been severely stabbed ahead of me.”
He and other witnesses described passengers flooding onto the platform as soon as the train made its emergency stop at Huntingdon, where travelers and paramedics tended to the wounded.
The transport police said the first reports of the attack came at 7:42 p.m. on the 6:25 p.m. service to London from Doncaster, in northern England, and that arrests were made “within eight minutes” of the first call to Britain’s emergency number.
Michael D. Shear is a senior Times correspondent covering British politics and culture, and diplomacy around the world.
