By ROBERT BARR
Associated Press Writer
LONDON - Plainclothes police chased a man in a thick coat through a subway station, wrestled him to the floor and shot him to death in front of stunned commuters Friday, a day after a jittery city was hit by a second wave of terrorist attacks.
The man was “directly linked” to continuing antiterrorist operations, Police Commissioner Ian Blair said.
Elsewhere in London, detectives investigating Thursday’s explosions searched a building in the Harrow Road area of West Kilburn, although no arrests were made, Scotland Yard said.
Police reportedly told residents to get inside their houses and then brought in a bomb disposal unit, including a remote vehicle, witnesses said.
The man who was shot to death at the Stockwell subway station was hit multiple times, witnesses said.
Passengers said a man, described as South Asian, ran onto a train at Stockwell station in south London. Witnesses said plainclothes police chased him, he tripped, and police then shot him.
“They pushed him onto the floor and unloaded five shots into him. He’s dead,” witness Mark Whitby told the British Broadcasting Corp. “He looked like a cornered fox. He looked petrified.”
Britain is home to many immigrants from the South Asian countries of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, among others.
Another witnesses, Anthony Larkin, told the BBC that the man appeared to have “a bomb belt and wires coming out.”
Police shouted “Get down, get down!” he said, adding that “People were panicking and I heard shots being fired.”
Whitby, however, said the man did not appear to have been carrying anything but said he was wearing a thick coat that looked padded. Temperatures in overcast London on Friday were in the 70s.
Police confirmed that armed officers entered Stockwell station in south London just after 10 a.m.
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