One Day in July

Jean wakes up early, just before his alarm goes off. He looks outside and sees that it’s another typical London summer day, grey and cool. He feels clear-headed, glad that he limited himself to two beers at the pub last night. At a little past eight he gets a phone call from his new boss, asking him to meet him at 10am at an address in Kilburn to repair a faulty fire alarm and do a general maintenance check on the alarm system. Not exactly exciting but the kind of work an electrician is often asked to do, really a piece of cake. He’s glad to be working at all. His last job was a disaster.

Basically, Jean knows that he’s a smart guy, maybe a bit too pushy, sure. But he wouldn’t have lasted long in London if he wasn’t. He knows how to talk to the dummies at the home office, how to contact the right people who can help other Brazilians with their passport problems. Basically, he’s there to help whenever a friend gets in trouble. He’s good at lots of things, including languages. The key is to use English all the time, which is also the key to making new friends.

Family is everything to him. When his cousin Vivienne arrived six months ago to try to get work to help pay for her dad’s operation, he took her under his wing. She was beautiful, but such a baby. He remembers when they first crossed the road together she nearly stepped out in front of a car because she was looking left instead of right. ‘It’s these little things that count’, he told her. ‘You look the wrong way and – splat. No more Viv. You need to learn how to keep yourself safe.’ A month later, one or two bad experiences and she was in tears, ready to run back home. He put his arms around her said: ‘Listen, this is London. You can do anything you want here. You can be anybody you want. Just give it a little more time.’ That was enough to turn her around.

At 8:30 Jean exits his block of flats on Scotia Road and walks toward the No. 2 bus station on Tulse Hill. When he jumps off the bus at Brixton he sees a notice that the station is closed due to a security alert because of the previous day's attempted bombings in London. Those suicide bombers are complete crazies, he thinks. You’re never going to get anywhere by blowing up innocent people. This is just what he didn’t need on his first day of a new job. He checks his watch and sees that he still has plenty of time. Good thing he left early. He jumps back on the bus and gets off at Stockwell.

Jean enters the tube station at about 9:00am, stopping to pick up a free newspaper. He uses his Oyster card to pay the fare, walks through the barriers and descends the escalator. He sees that a train has just arrived on the platform but he’s not going to run for it. The next one will be there in a few minutes and will probably be a lot less crowded. He finds a seat on the next train, plugs in his earphones and listens to Los Hermanos until he reaches his stop.

When he gets to the block of flats in Kilburn with the faulty alarm, he sees what the problem is right away and easily fixes it. His new boss seems amazed at how quickly it’s done. Jean smiles and claps him on the shoulder, thinking that most things can be figured out by anybody with half a brain. But still, not bad for a boy brought up on a failing farm in Brazil. After he got his engineering diploma in Sao Paulo he was out of there, ready to see the big world. He arrived in London with the usual visitor’s visa, but a little conniving and that was extended to a two-year student visa. Maybe he wasn’t officially a student, but the way he saw it London was one steep learning curve. It wasn’t cheating, just interpreting the rules to fit your situation. You have to learn how to play the system.

He gets off work early and, after stopping for a coffee with his friend Manny, he gets home in the afternoon and flicks through the Lonely Planet guide for Portugal. As soon as he can get some money together he wants to go travelling. He has a shower before picking up Veronica from work. They’ll have a drink and a quick bite, then probably go to Juju’s, because Veronica loves to dance. He thinks of her joyful face on the dance floor, dark hair whipping around her. They’ve been seeing each other for almost six months now. She’s the kind of good Brazilian girl that his mother would want him to marry. But if his mother ever saw Ronnie letting loose on the dance floor she might have second thoughts. He laughs. It’s going to be a great night. He’s just happy to be young and enjoying himself in one of the most exciting cities in the world. Leave the future to fortune tellers, he thinks. Just enjoy today.

***

Jean wakes up late. He must have turned off his alarm and gone back to sleep. He looks outside and sees that it’s another typical London summer day, grey and cool. His head is pounding. Too many tequilas at the bar last night when he was celebrating his new job. He checks his phone. At a little past eight his boss had left a message, asking him to meet him at 10am at an address in Kilburn to repair a faulty fire alarm. Oh shit. Not a good look to show up late on your first day at work.

At 9:30 he exits his block of flats on Scotia Road and jogs toward the No. 2 bus stop on Tulse Hill. Unknown to him, he’s being watched by an undercover surveillance unit from the Metropolitan Police who have just arrived on the scene. They’re searching for suspects in four attempted bombings carried out the previous day. An address in Scotia Road was written on a gym membership card that was found inside one of the unexploded bags used by the bombers.

A soldier on secondment to the team sees Jean emerge from the communal entrance of the address they’re staking out. He quickly compares Jean to the blurry CCTV photographs of the bombing suspects from the previous day and thinks he might have spotted one of the terrorists. But he desperately needs to pee, and by the time he’s back at post with his camera, ready to send in an image of the suspect to headquarters, Jean has already jumped on board the bus. Why was he in such a hurry? Meanwhile, three other members of the team are now on board that bus.

At Brixton station their suspicions are increased when Jean jumps off the bus, then quickly reboards it. That was a weird thing to do. How come? They don’t realize that the station is closed. By the time Jean exits the bus at Stockwell station they’re on high alert and have already contacted Gold Command and reported that Jean matches the description of two of the previous day's suspects. Gold Command authorises ‘code red’ tactics and orders the surveillance officers to prevent Jean from boarding a train. They then transfer control of the operation to Specialist Firearms Command, which immediately dispatches firearms officers to Stockwell tube station.

Three surveillance officers follow Jean onto the train, keeping it in the station by holding the door open. When the firearms officers arrive on the platform one of the officers yells: ‘He's here!’ Then all hell breaks loose. What happens next is contested. The one sure thing is that the suspect, Jean Charles de Menezes, ends up dead, sprawled face down on the floor of a Victoria Line train with one shoe off and seven bullets in the back of his head.

***

Immediately after the shooting, the Metropolitan Police stated that the shooting was ‘directly linked’ to the investigation of the attempted bombings the previous day. It was revealed that police policy towards suspected suicide bombers had been revised and that officers had been ordered to fire directly at a suspect’s head because shooting at the chest could conceivably detonate a concealed bomb.

During the following weeks of legal proceedings the incident is unspooled, the final report is drawn up, and certain questions are finally answered:

Q: Was the suspect wearing a heavy overcoat inappropriate for summer and did he jump over the ticket barrier at Stockwell Station, as the initial report states?

A: No, the suspect was wearing a light jeans jacket and used his Oyster card to enter the station.

Q: Did the firearms officers who boarded the train challenge the suspect, as was originally claimed?

A: No challenge was made.

Q: When the suspect stood up, did he move threateningly toward the officers?

A: The suspect stood up, along with several other passengers, but made no move toward the officers.

Q: Once the suspect had been restrained, did he struggle to free himself?

A: No, the subject put up no resistance.

Q: Was the suspect wearing a suicide vest?

A: The suspect was not wearing a suicide vest, nor were any weapons of any description found on his body.

Q: Is there any evidence whatsoever that the suspect was affiliated with a terrorist group?

A: There is no evidence of any such affiliation.

Later, the Metropolitan Police Service issued an official apology to Jean’s family in which they described the incident as a ‘tragedy that they deeply regretted’. They also covered the funeral expenses when his body was interred back in his hometown in Brazil and an undisclosed sum was eventually paid to his parents in compensation for the wrongful death of their son. In 2016 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the police officer who killed him should not be prosecuted. This wasn’t surprising. Since 1990 there have been 80 fatal shootings by police officers in the UK and no successful prosecutions. Jean Charles de Menezes just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – like the 52 people two weeks earlier killed by four terrorists who had set off bombs on buses and tube trains in the heart of London. Some things just can’t be predicted.