Ben Leo recalls horrific ordeal after ‘stumbling across bodies’ at the London Bridge terror attack: ‘I’ll never forget it’
GB News presenter Ben Leo has recalled his personal experience of the 2017 London Bridge terror attack after coming face to face with one of the victims’s bodies.
Speaking on Britain’s Newsroom, Ben reflected on the horrific ordeal, declaring he will “never forget the sight” of what he witnessed.
Eight people were killed and 48 were injured on the third of June 2017, when three attackers ploughed into pedestrians in a hired van and engaged in a savage knife attack.
The attackers, Khuram Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, were confronted and shot dead by police marksmen at the scene.
Reflecting on his personal experience of that attack, Ben told the GB News panel: “I went down for a sandwich during the London Bridge attack at Borough Market, I was working in the news building nearby.
“I went down and I stumbled across all the bodies there.”
Revealing he came face to face with one of the victims, 21-year-old Sara Zelenak, Ben continued: “I was with one young Australian girl, her name was Sara Zelenak, she’d had her throat cut and she was one of the victims.
“But I will never forget the sight. I was standing over her, I was just staring at her, and I couldn’t quite compute what was going on.”
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Sharing more details of the horrific ordeal, Ben recounted: “I didn’t know why she wasn’t moving, but she was dead. I concluded she was dead, and I’ll never forget that sight.”
Admitting he has been able to deal with his experience eight years on, Ben told cohost Nana Akua that although he “cried that night”, he has not been “affected that much” in present day.
Ben said: “I don’t think it’s really affected me that much. I cried that night, I was shaken up, but some people say to me, you’re gonna have to deal with that in the future, but I don’t think it has affected me.”
Reflecting on their own experiences of terror attacks, panellists Dr Renee Hoenderkamp and Judita DaSilva both revealed that a relative of theirs was on the bus that was attacked in the 7/7 bombing.
Hoenderkamp told GB News: “My relative was actually evacuated from the tube, so that was the only reason she was on the bus, and she went upstairs and wanted a window seat and there was only one.
“And she actually asked somebody to move so that she could sit in that window seat. And when you see the pictures of the bus, there are just some seats left at the front, and she was in that last seat. And so she played over and over why she made that decision to get on.”
DaSilva then revealed to the panel: “I’m struggling to say it, but my cousin died on the bus. His name was Anthony, God rest his soul.
“Funnily enough, I’d been using the King’s Cross train and I’d quit just the week before, so I wasn’t going on my normal route that day. But just to think that he was at the back of the bus, and had be been at the front…”