incident when they first responded. now erin mclaughlin is near the scene of the incident and can add more to what we heard at the press conference. erin? reporter: a device of sorts was found on the suspect s body, believed to be a hoax device at this point, and that presumably is the reason why they believe this was a terror-related incident. certainly treating it as much from the get-go. just an hour ago, really saw an overwhelming police response as they tried to clear this area. it remains cordoned off. we saw specialized police units with bomb sniffing dogs combing this entire area. the buildings you see behind me remain evacuated. you can see police cordon still in place. beyond that a number of police
literally ran towards danger. and they confronted them. we do know from the statement given that there appears to be a device on the suspect. members of the public didn t realize at the time that was a hoax device and they really are the best of us. another example of the bravery and heroism of ordinary londoners, risking their own personal safety. thank you to them on behalf of all londoners but also because it shows the best of us. [ inaudible question ] i m mayor of the greatest city in the world and we do know that there are people out there who hate our diversity, hate what we stand for and are trying to seek to divide us. what was amazing about today is we saw in one individual, the
the civilians hero holding them down not knowing the bomb. malcolm, you want to weigh in? it is amazing that those people did that. knowing that based on the bureau market attack shows that if we don t stop him, he s going to go on a rampage and start killing people. when he started crossing london bridge, he attacked a woman right there and the by stander um j jumped up on him and took injury himself and held him down. we find these hoax device looked just like real devices. you don t know and some often put play dough or can or something. they have that fake detonator,
matter of 30 seconds or so. seeing a device which was a hoax device and nobody knew it was a hoax device. at any moment he could have pulled that thing from their perspective. not knowing if it was a hoax device or not and killed every one of them. that didn t happen, thank god, but think of the mindset and what these police officers were trained for in approaching this individual who had a device strapped to him and what these civilians were not trained for. just enjoying their walk across the london bridge. attacking this individual, getting him to the ground despite the fact that he had this device strapped to his chest which turned out to be a hoax. well, you re absolutely right. and, you know, i think here in the united states we you know, we see these things or supposedly they re routine. because we have armed police officers everywhere. they know what to do with an individual with a knife. they shoot him or use a taser, but in a terrorist incident like
determine, is it actual c-4 or some type of explosive? or is it just a chunk of clay to simulate a hoax device? they re looking at it and coming up with a plan of what they re gonna do. finally, the guy says, you know we re gonna take this off ya. so i went down with a couple cutting tools, had him remain on his knees facing away from me, lifted his shirt up and slowly started cuttin the tape up his back. reporter: as if matt hadn t already gone through enough this day, another sticky problem came up. he was extremely hairy, this was gorilla tape, and it was wrapped around his entire torso. so while removing it, we were causing quite a bit of pain because it was removing all the hair from his torso. we ve finally get the bomb off me. and it goes down to my feet. and he goes, kick it away and then run with me and go behind the truck. well, i go to kick the bomb away