Video: Man 'carrying two knives' tasered outside Buckingham Palace

Man arrested after holding a knife to his throat outside Buckingham Palace

Video: Grant Shepherd / YouTube

A man brandishing knives was Tasered outside Buckingham Palace today after disrupting the Changing of the Guard ceremony.

The man, believed to be in his 50s, broke through police cordons and held one knife to his neck and attempted to slash at officers with a six-inch blade while shouting.

He was arrested on suspicion of affray after being temporarily paralysed by the electrical charge from a police Taser gun.

Kevin Burrows, an onlooker, said: “A man just started running towards the palace, I just saw him running towards the front gate.

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it’. There must have been about 15 police officers on foot who surrounded him once he’d been Tasered. The police saw him really quickly and were obviously cautious. They were shouting at everybody to get back. There were police on horses. I saw the shot fired – the police officer was about three metres from him.

“It took a couple of seconds for him to fall to the ground. He was carried off in a police van.”

Police told the hundreds of tourists gathered for the midday ceremony that the man “tried to make an exhibition of himself” and that there were “mental health issues”.

The Queen and Prince Philip were at Sandringham at the time.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said the man was not making threats to the public. He is in custody at a central London police station.

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