How 90 minutes of panic and fear unfolded as rampage which killed three leaves ... trends now
The horror began with 'awful blood-curdling screams' just after 4am as two students walking home from a nightclub were ambushed by an attacker dressed in black.
Witnesses said the hooded knifeman hacked at the helpless 19-year-olds, who were just five minutes from their lodgings and apparently targeted at random.
A witness recalled: 'Being a hot night, I had the window open and I just heard some awful, blood-curdling screams. I looked out of the window and saw a black guy dressed all in black, with a hood and rucksack, grappling with some people. It was a girl, and a man she was with.
'She was screaming 'Help!' I saw him stab the lad first and then the woman. It was repeated stabbing – four or five times.
'The lad collapsed in the middle of the road. The girl stumbled toward a house and didn't move. The next minute she had disappeared down the side of a house, and that's where they found her.'
The hooded knifeman hacked at the helpless 19-year-olds, who were just five minutes from their lodgings
Pictured: The victim named locally as Grace Kumar
Speaking to the BBC, the witness added: 'The attacker then just walked off up Ilkeston Road towards town, as calm as anything.'
Paramedics tried in vain for 40 minutes to revive the pair, named locally as Grace Kumar and Barnaby Webber, but could not save their lives. Within an hour, another victim had been stabbed to death, a man in his fifties on Magdala Road about a mile and a half away.
Police now believe the knifeman stole this second man's white van and then drove around Nottingham. Police are investigating whether the van was flagged down or the driver attacked as he went to get in.
Around 5.30am there was a scream as a woman made the grim discovery of the van owner's bloodied body in the street near Magdala Tennis Club. Delivery driver Miklos Toldi, 37, and his wife Petra had been heading to work in their car. They live just 100 yards away and stopped their car at the same time as another motorist.
Mr Toldi, a Hungarian national, said he saw the body lying in the street with stab wounds, adding: 'There was blood trailing down the road. The blood looked as if it was fresh. He was lying on his side, his mouth was open and there was no movement.'
Mr Toldi said it took police just two to three minutes to arrive at the scene following a 999 call. Another neighbour remembers hearing a 'loud bang'.
Bibi Garbutt, 85, a former opera singer, said: 'At 5.30 there was a loud bang that woke me up. It sounded like an explosion, I thought it was a bomb going off.
'I went on to my balcony in my dressing gown and heard somebody running but didn't see anything and went back inside. I was scared.' By now, Nottingham police were frantically trying to keep pace with the horror as they dashed to multiple incidents and calls came in from across the city.
On Milton Street in the city centre, outside the Theatre Royal, the nine-year-old Vauxhall van was being used to mow down pedestrians at a bus stop, also at around 5.30am.
Witness Lynn Haggitt said she saw the driver apparently speeding up and slamming into people.
She told the BBC: 'He looked in his mirror, saw a police car behind him, he then quickened up.
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'There were two people, two in the corner – he went straight into these two people. The woman went on the kerb, the man went up in the air – there was such a bang. I wish I never saw it, it's really shaken me up.
'The woman was sitting up on the kerb, she looked OK.
'The man was laying down, but then he got up, sat on the side waiting for an ambulance. I
