Teen defiant after terror attack

Travis Frain, 19, had been on a three-day trip to the capital with students and a tutor from Edge Hill University and had just stepped out for some fresh air during a trip to Parliament when attacker Khalid Masood struck.

The former Darwen Aldridge Community Academy student was hit head-on and thrown into the air when Masood drove a 4x4 across Westminster Bridge mowing down pedestrians before stabbing a police officer.

Travis was with four others at the time and said he was about a third of the way across the bridge texting when his friend shouted ‘Travis look out’.

He said: “The car could have been about five metres away. I did not have time to react.

“The car hit me head on and I went up over the bonnet. All I remember seeing is the top of Big Ben and the blue sky.

“It could have been a lot worse. I landed on my left side on the pavement exactly where I had been hit. I was extremely lucky. I could easily have been thrown under a bus.”

His three friends were also struck.

Travis said he was aware a car was coming towards him, but there was ‘no moment where his life flashed before his eyes’.

“It was like a zombie film. The car was completely smashed up. I could not see the driver because the glass was shattered.”

He said initially he was not sure it was a terror attack.

“You know they happen quite often but you don’t think it is going to happen to you. I thought the driver might have had a heart attack.

“For about two minutes after I was walking fine. You go into autopilot. I was thinking about picking up my phone off the floor which sounds weird.”

He said however his eyes then started to swirl and he could not see anything.

He described the scene around him as ‘chaotic’.

“There was a group of tourists a couple of metres in front and there was a woman who started screaming because some of their group were unresponsive on the floor.

It was his Dutch friend who said ‘this is an attack’ and then Travis received a news alert on his phone about a shooting.

He also recalled overhearing a message on the police radio about a ‘suspicious package on a bridge’ and not knowing whether it was the same bridge.

Travis, who studies history and politics, spent just over a week in Kings College Hospital after suffering a fracture and torn ligament in his leg, a laceration near his groin, internal bruising, whiplash, a fractured hand and two broken fingers.

His arm was also badly burnt which he discovered this week after having the cast taken off.

He is still walking with crutches. Doctors think it could take three to six months before he makes a recovery.

While in hospital he also had a visit from Prince Charles.

He said: “There are ups and downs. It really upset me when I got the cast off and saw the burns.

“I am positive because they say I should make a full recovery which is a lot better than some of the others who have been described as having life-changing injuries.

“But there are down days. I don’t know it it will ever fully sink in.

He said he would have ‘nothing to say’ to the attacker.

“I don’t think he deserves the time of day,” he said.

For now the first-year student is concentrating on getting better, having physio, taking his exams at the end of the summer and hopes to be able to run again one day.

He has cancelled a planned trip to New York where he was going to work in a museum for the holidays but hopes to go next summer.

He said he has travelled back to London a few times since the attack and it has not put him off. “I have had lots of people from across the country message me. One lady said she was thinking of cancelling her holiday but said that would be letting them win,” he said.

“If you don’t go back to London you achieve what he wanted.

“One guy tried to shut down London. The bridge was closed for 24 hours and they re-opened it and life went on as normal.”