David Copeland - Terrorist Attacks

Terrorist Attacks

Copeland's first attack, on Saturday, 17 April 1999, was in Electric Avenue, Brixton. He made his bomb using explosives from fireworks, taping it inside a sports bag before priming it and planting it outside an Iceland supermarket. The Brixton Market traders became suspicious, and one of them moved the bag to a less crowded area. It detonated just as the police arrived, at 5:25 in the evening. Forty-eight people were injured, many of them seriously because of the four-inch nails Copeland had packed around the bomb. One 23-month-old toddler had a nail driven through his skull into his brain (see right).

His second bomb, on the following Saturday, 24 April, was aimed at Brick Lane, the centre of the Bengali area in the east end of London. There is a famous street market on Sundays, but Copeland mistakenly tried to plant the bomb on Saturday when the street was less busy. Unwilling to change the timer on the bomb, he left it instead in Hanbury Street, where it exploded. Thirteen people were injured, but there were no fatalities.

The third and final bomb was planted and detonated on the evening of Friday, 30 April at the Admiral Duncan pub in Old Compton Street, the centre of London's gay village when the pub and street outside were very crowded because the evening was the start of a Bank Holiday weekend. Andrea Dykes, 27, four months pregnant with her first child, died along with her friends and hosts for the evening, Nick Moore, 31, and John Light, 32, who was to be the baby's godfather. Andrea's husband, Julian, was seriously injured. The four friends from Essex had met up in the Admiral Duncan to celebrate Andrea's pregnancy, when the bomb exploded after being taped inside a sports bag and left near the bar. Seventy-nine people were injured, many of them seriously. Four of the survivors had to have limbs amputated.