As a knife-wielding assailant wearing a imitation suicide belt caused chaos on London Bridge in 2019, Darryn Frost remembers entering a zone of intense focus.
Upon taking hold of a decorative unicorn-of-the-sea horn from the wall of Fishmongers’ Hall, the formerly shy public official focused entirely on the danger and sprinted at it, assisting in hold down the attacker to the ground.
Experts cannot definitively say why Frost evolved from spectator to “courageous intervener”, similar to individuals who have acted in similar moments, such as a man who disarmed a gun off an gunman on Sydney’s Bondi Beach.
For Frost, his reasoning is neither simple or primal. He has spoken about the incident with another individual who was on temporary leave from prison at the time and wielded a piece of furniture to help bring down the knife-man. “He said he reacted on instinct, whereas I was considering each move and outcome of it,” Frost said.
When the London Bridge attack began inside the hall, Frost said pandemonium and confusion took hold. “There was shrieks, commotion, nobody knew what was going on and I believe it would have been the same on Bondi Beach.”
Moving into danger, he maintained, was not a innate impulse. “I don’t believe it comes naturally to anyone. I witnessed a young woman fall, and she was very clearly gravely hurt. So the next thought in my mind was: ‘I need to prevent that from occurring to anyone else.”
He said what came next felt unreal: “It’s crazy, but this was all transpiring in an instant. It really is like action movies, where time literally decelerates for you.”
He said his senses narrowed to a singular target: the attacker. “I had extreme focus,” he remembered. “My hearing tuned out everything around me apart from the individual in front of me. It’s a truly peculiar thing. Alarms were going off, I couldn’t even hear that. All I could hear was what he was saying.”
“My vision went tunnel vision just on to him so anything in the surroundings I couldn’t see, and what I could see was extremely sharp like ultra-clear video. I can even now remember the specks of debris in the air.”
“The way you interpret what’s happening determines what you’ll do, and your perceptions are driven by past experiences and anticipations.”
A expert in neuroscience commented that humans, like all mammals, display a natural “confront or flee” response to danger or surprise, but it does not command the chosen behavior they elect to take.
“It readies your muscles, and to some extent your mind, for movement, but the specific act that you take depends on a host of other factors,” he added.
“The brain often decides before we are aware. There’s compelling evidence to say that many processes in the brain which influence your behaviour happen prior to you’re aware of them.”
He said the brand of courage that caused people to run towards danger while others were escaping was influenced not by “instinct”, but by personal history and any instruction they may have had.
Recently, a veteran was celebrated as a brave individual for confronting the driver of a car that had plowed into pedestrians.
No Single Type for a Hero
A professor in workplace health psychology, who has a research focus in gun violence, said there was no “predictable template” of the kind of person who would “step up”.
“It’s equally probable to be an fierce mum in defence mode as it could be a athletic rugby-playing man,” said the academic. “That’s reassuring because that means that assailants, either or terrorists, they’re never quite sure who’s going to be the challenger who could stop them.”
An Unlikely Defender
During a previous London Bridge attack, a 56-year-old football fan was repeatedly knifed in his arms, torso and skull as he attempted to fight off three knife-wielding terrorists with his own body.
“Come on then, I’m Millwall,” he allegedly yelled after the attackers burst into a steakhouse.
“They’d entered and forced the door open, and that’s when the three of them began attacking me. I began to resist with them, but it allowed that 20 or 30 people a window to flee in front of me. It nearly took my life,” he said.
“I was fighting for my life. Punching and fighting. [I was stabbed] eight times and cut in the head as well... I fractured my ribs when I went back into the table. But fortunately – I have some lingering weakness still – but nothing major. It’s only the trauma aftermath that really affected me.”
Dubbed the “Lion of London Bridge”, he said he made a instantaneous choice to intervene.
“The logical response is to flee. [But] you can be an fool and face multiple attackers,” he said. “There was an older gentleman with us, about 78, and I think that was the reason why I didn't run. But obviously it gave other people a opportunity to escape as well.”
He was not officially recognised for his courage and did not receive a payout for his injuries, a situation he linked to past convictions. Despite this, he said he would do it again to intervene again.
“I’ve not had any boxing training or something like that. [But] I’ve accomplished something right. Whether that makes up for the mistakes I’ve done, it's debatable?”
