Time to ban guns in the UK..oh wait.
Tragic.
The 41-year-old Labour pol died after being shot as many as three times after an altercation near a public meeting she was due to attend. A 52-year-old man is in custody.
LONDON — A British lawmaker has been shot dead at close range on a street in northern England.
Eyewitnesses said Jo Cox, 41, was approached by an older man who knocked her to the ground before firing at her at least twice with a makeshift or antique weapon. She was airlifted to a local hospital but could not survive her injuries.
The attacker walked calmly away from the scene as local shopkeepers and residents rushed to help the popular Member of Parliament. Police officers arrested a 52-year-old suspect soon after the attack.
Campaigning for Britain’s referendum on membership of the European Union, which takes place next week, has been suspended. Twenty-four hours before the assault, Cox had been on a boat in the River Thames with her husband and two young children campaigning for Britain to remain part of the union.
One witness claimed to have heard the attacker shouting “Britain first!” according to Sky News.
Hithem Ben Abdallah was in a café close to the attack when he heard screaming. He went outside to see a man attacking a woman as she lay on the ground.
“He was kicking her and he was pulling her by her hair. A very courageous man from the dry cleaners tried to restrain him and he couldn’t stop him because all of a sudden he pulled a gun,” he told the Press Association. “She was a standing still target for him when he shot her.
“The man stepped back with the gun and fired it and then he fired a second shot, as he was firing he was looking down at the ground.”
Once the attacker had walked away from the scene, Abdallah was stunned to discover that he knew the victim. He had helped campaign for the election of Cox, who became a Labour Member of Parliament last year.
“I’m absolutely shocked, because I know Jo very well. It’s devastating,” he said.
Sam Watson told Sky News that he arrived on the scene in time to see the attacker leave. [He] just walked—as if he wasn’t panicking,” he told Sky News.
Another witness, Clarke Rothwell, told the BBC he saw Cox being stabbed as well as shot. “Three times she was shot, the initial time which then she dropped to the floor and two more times. The third time he got close proximity he shot her round the head area,” he said. “In the meantime he was stabbing her as well, he was stabbing her with his knife.”
Cox's husband, Brendan, was also involved in politics—he was an adviser to Gordon Brown when he was prime minister.
As news of the attack emerged, her friend Stella Creasy, a Labour Member of Parliament, wrote on Twitter: “Jo Cox not only a fantastic MP, she’s also a great mate—please, please, please God let her be ok!”
Glenys Kinnock, a Labour member of the House of Lords, wrote on Twitter: “Love to Jo—a truly wonderful woman . My beloved friend for 20 years.”
Cox was attacked while on the way to her weekly “public surgery,” in which members of the public are able to ask their MPs for help or advice. In 2010, Stephen Timms was attacked during one of these events by a woman wielding a 6-inch kitchen knife. He survived two stab wounds after emergency surgery.
Cox was not so fortunate. "The death of Jo Cox is a tragedy. She was a committed and caring MP. My thoughts are with her husband Brendan and her two young children," said Prime Minister David Cameron.
