Jonathan Gjoshe: Footballer in mass train attack reveals he was stabbed seven times
“I was stabbed in the shoulder first,” he tells BBC Sport.
“I remember jumping over the table, jumping over the chairs. I was running down the hall and telling people, ‘There’s a man with a knife, run, I’ve been stabbed, run, run, run.’ I was screaming. I think I was the first person to get stabbed. I felt the pain. But the adrenaline kicked in.”
“At that moment, jumping over the table saved me. All I could think about was running for my life, getting off that train. When I got down to the first or second carriage, I set off the alarm and was covered in blood.”
“I thought if I died I would never see my family again, and that was my main concern,” he says. “Normally I’d go back to London. This is the first time I’ve taken the train to go back. What are the odds of this happening? It’s crazy.”
The train made an emergency stop at Huntingdon, where it was met by armed police. Gjoshe, who was given first aid by a passenger, managed to get himself out of the station car park and paramedics took him to hospital.
It was only after surgery that he learned he had seven wounds on his bicep, shoulder and arm.
Paramedics told him the knife “pierced my muscles” and slightly hit a nerve in his arm.
Asked if he was afraid his football career would end, he says: “I was very worried. I just thought, ‘What harm has happened to me?’ I was thinking. I had no idea until I had the surgery. ‘It’s nothing more than anger,’ they said. “You are very lucky,” he said.
In the following days, Gjoshe recalls: “They had to move me from ward to ward because of the media looking for me there.”
Released from hospital, Gjoshe faced several months of rehabilitation and only returned to full training in March, which he describes as “a huge relief”. I started to regain movement in my arm, and it was getting better every day. “It was an incredible feeling.”
Despite bearing his experience with impressive fortitude, Gjoshe has not boarded the train since the mass stabbing.
“I wouldn’t want that now. You never know. It’s best to be safe. I can’t trust anything anymore,” he says.
