A bouncer hailed a hero in the wake of the terror attack at London Borough Market has described the moment he fought with the three terrorists. Ozzie Gandaa appeared on Good Morning Britain on Thursday to share his experience of the atrocity, in which eight people were killed and many more seriously injured. Ozzie was working on Saturday night when the attack took place and revealed how he threw chairs and bar stools at the terrorists in a bid to stop people getting hurt.
"[I was] just throwing chairs, throwing whatever I could find to kind of corner them off and get them focused on me rather than other people," he told hosts Ben Shephard and Kate Garraway. "One of my friends, one of the bar staff, she was stabbed and I just thought I couldn't live with myself if she didn't make it back, if I didn't do more. So I didn't know if she was alive or dead but I thought I need to go back so I could sleep at night. The fact that I've done those actions, she was able to go home. I wouldn't want her family turning around and saying it's because of you my daughter's not alive, I couldn't live with myself personally as a man I couldn't do that."
Bouncer Ozzie Gandaa appeared on Good Morning Britain to talk about the London Borough Market attack
Speaking of how the attack unfolded, Ozzie said: "Basically once they got a little bit closer to me I realised the severity of the situation. I saw the knives. That kind of didn't scare me as much, I still felt I could do something, so I still proceeded to walk towards them. It was only when I looked down at one of the gentleman and I saw that he had what looked like to me was a bomb, so that's when I decided I needed to get everyone who was capable of moving out of the area. I had another security member with me and I just told him and anyone that was in the area to run, just to get away from the area. Because we're right next to pubs and there's a lot of flammable material and I didn't want anything to happen, so I just moved everyone out of the area as quick as possible."
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Ozzie said he was scared at the time, but added: "I'm kind of trained to deal with certain situations – obviously not that severe but I knew I needed to evacuate the area as soon as possible." Of the fact that he saved lives by evacuating the area, he said: "After the whole situation happened, yeah, I actually sat back and thought, 'Oh my God, I've actually saved these people.'"
Ozzie spoke about the moment he bravely approached the three terrorists
Ozzie said that his mum had "initially more or less started crying" when she heard what he had done. "[She] wasn't happy with the fact that I've put myself in that situation where I've got a young boy I've got to look after as well," he said. "And she was more worried about me and my safety and my staff's safety." He also revealed that he found it hard to revisit the Borough in the wake of the attack.
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"It made me feel like a little bit of a different person now," he admitted. "I'm a strong person, I rarely run from things, it's not in my nature to do it - it's changed the way I kind of feel. I feel very paranoid going back to the place… I know it's not going to happen again. And the likelihood of it happening again in my lifetime again is more or less impossible, but in the back of my head it's 'Is it going to happen again? Am I safe? Are my staff going to be safe? Are the people that I'm going to be working with going to be safe?'"