As Violent Incidents Break Out, What Makes a Individual Move Into Danger?

As a blade-carrying terrorist equipped with a fake explosive vest triggered chaos on London Bridge in 2019, Darryn Frost describes entering a condition of profound clarity.

Upon taking hold of a ornamental unicorn-of-the-sea horn from the wall of Fishmongers’ Hall, the formerly shy public official locked onto the threat and ran at it, assisting in restrain the attacker to the ground.

The reasons remain uncertain why Frost evolved from onlooker to “have-a-go hero”, much like others who have acted in similar situations, such as a man who wrestled a gun off an assailant on Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

For Frost, his reasoning is not simple nor automatic. He has discussed the event with a fellow intervener who had day release from prison at the time and wielded a chair to assist in subduing the knife-man. “He described how he acted on impulse, whereas I was thinking about every action and result of it,” Frost stated.

When the London Bridge attack began inside the hall, Frost said pandemonium and uncertainty reigned. “You could hear screaming, noise, nobody knew what was going on and I believe it would have been the same on Bondi Beach.”

Charging into the threat, he insisted, was not a natural impulse. “I don’t think it is instinctive to anyone. I saw a young woman fall, and she was undoubtedly severely injured. So the following idea in my mind was: ‘I need to stop that from happening to someone else’.”

He said what came next felt dreamlike: “It’s crazy, but this was all unfolding in a flash. It really is like superhero movies, where time seemingly stretches out for you.”

He said his senses focused to a single point: the attacker. “I had extreme focus,” he recalled. “My hearing switched off everything around me except for the perpetrator in front of me. It’s a really 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 everything in the surroundings I was blind to, and what I could see was extremely sharp like high-definition imagery. I can even now visualize the particles of debris in the air.”

“How you understand what’s occurring alters what you’ll do, and your perceptions are driven by past experiences and anticipations.”

A brain specialist explained that humans, like all mammals, exhibit a natural “fight or flight” reaction to threat or surprise, but it does not determine the course of action they elect to take.

“It primes your muscles, and to some extent your brain, for response, but the specific act that you take depends on a number of other things,” he added.

“The brain often decides before we are aware. There’s very good research to say that lots of processes in the brain which influence your behaviour happen prior to you’re aware of them.”

He said the type of heroism that led people to run towards danger while others were running away was influenced not by “innate reflex”, but by personal history and any instruction they may have had.

Recently, a ex-military man was praised as a brave individual for confronting the driver of a vehicle that had been driven at pedestrians.

There is No Definitive Blueprint for a Hero

A professor in workplace health psychology, who has a research focus in gun violence, said there was no “profile” of the sort of person who would “have a go”.

“It’s just as likely to be an angry mother in mama-bear mode as it could be a athletic sports-playing man,” said the professor. “That’s reassuring because that suggests that perpetrators, lone wolves or terrorists, they’re never quite sure who’s going to be the challenger who could challenge them.”

An Unlikely Defender

During the 2017 London Bridge attack, a 56-year-old football fan was repeatedly knifed in his arms, torso and skull as he attempted to resist three knife-wielding terrorists with his own body.

“Come on then, I’m Millwall,” he reportedly shouted after the attackers stormed a steakhouse.

“They’d entered and forced the door open, and that’s when the three of them lunged at me. I fought back with them, but it provided that 20 or 30 people a window to escape in front of me. It nearly cost me my life,” he recalled.

“I was battling for my life. Striking and punching. [I was stabbed] multiple times and cut in the head as well... I broke my ribs when I was thrown back into the table. But luckily – my arm’s a bit weak still – but nothing major. It’s only the emotional scars aftermath that really affected me.”

Called the “Lion of London Bridge”, he said he made a instantaneous decision to intervene.

“You should run. [But] you can be an brave fool and take three on,” he said. “There was an elderly gentleman with us, about 78, and I think that was the catalyst why I stood my ground. But clearly it gave other people a chance to escape as well.”

He was not formally honoured for his bravery and did not receive financial redress for his injuries, a situation he attributed to past legal issues. Despite this, he said he would not hesitate to intervene again.

“I’ve not had any formal combat lessons or anything like that. [But] I’ve done something positive. Whether that offsets the bad things I’ve done, who knows?”