By Sam Tabahriti
LONDON (Reuters) -A British man accused of carrying out a mass stabbing on board a train on Saturday was charged on Monday with 11 counts of attempted murder, including over a separate incident earlier the same day at a train station in east London.
Police said they were also investigating whether there were any links between those incidents and a stabbing in the suspect’s hometown of Peterborough the previous night, as well as two other incidents there.
Eleven people were injured in the mass stabbing on the London-bound train, including a member of the train crew hurt while trying to stop the attack, who was still in hospital on Monday, in a critical but stable condition.
Anthony Williams, 32, appeared at Peterborough Magistrates’ Court on Monday and was remanded in custody until his next court hearing on December 1. Prosecutors charged him with 11 counts of attempted murder, one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two counts of possession of a bladed article.
Ten of the attempted murder charges were linked to the train attack, British Transport Police said, while the eleventh was connected to the incident at the London station.
Police have ruled out terrorism and said the suspect acted alone. They said they were investigating whether other incidents involving a man with a knife in Peterborough, a city on the train’s route about 100 miles (160 km) north of London, were linked.
“British Transport Police retain primacy for the overall investigation, which will include these three incidents,” Cambridgeshire Police said in a statement.
Officers attended the stabbing of a 14-year-old, who sustained minor injuries, in Peterborough on Friday night, but could not locate the offender, they said. A man also appeared with a knife at a barber’s shop in the south of the city on Friday night, and police were called to the same place on Saturday morning.
Scunthorpe United, an English fifth-tier soccer team, said their player Jonathan Gjoshe was one of the victims of the attack and he remained in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Transport minister Heidi Alexander said on Monday the suspect was not known to security services. She declined to comment on whether he was known to mental health services.
Five of the injured had been discharged from hospital by late on Sunday.
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti; Writing by Sarah Young, Editing by Kate Holton, William James, Peter Graff)
