LONDON -- A crack police squad stormed a London apartment with their guns blazing and rescued a 4-year-old girl taken hostage by a knifeman who fatally stabbed her mother in a bloody Christmas siege that lasted nearly 30 hours.
In a drama watched by millions of television viewers, officers of Scotland Yard's Blue Beret squad Thursday stormed the apartment late Thursday 29 hours after handyman Errol Walker, 29, threatened to kill Carlene, 4, with a kitchen knife.
The siege, attributed to a domestic dispute, began about 10:00 a.m. on Christmas Day, a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said. Police were called to the scene Christmas morning after Carlene's mother, Jacky Charles, 22, staggered from the third-floor apartment after being stabbed in the neck. She died later in the hospital.
Police said Walker's wife, Marlene, managed to get out of the apartment and that a fireman snatched their daughter, Patricia, 6, through a window.
'It was at this point the siege proper began,' the police spokeswoman said.
It lasted all through Wednesday and most of Thursday. Then, as television cameras focused on the scene, Walker made a five-second dash from the door to pick up a police shield lying on the balcony. Officers tried to grab him without firing any shots, but he got inside again.
'He shouted to us that he was going to kill Carlene. We decided that her life was in immediate danger and made the decision to storm the apartment using distraction devices,' she said.
Police said three shots were fired. Walker was hit in the head and shoulder. The little girl was taken to a waiting ambulance with a knife wound to the neck and a stab wound in her arm.
Police said both were in the hospital in satisfactory condition.
'We decided in the beginning to try and wait this one out and negotiate it through. The negotiations lasted 29 hours. There were periods of considerable instability and periods of calm,' a police spokeswoman said.
'From the outset, the police intention was to prevent further injury. But he was armed with a long-bladed kitchen knife and showed considerable instability and irrational behavior,' she said. 'In the end we had to storm in.'
