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The owner of a barber shop that twice faced a knife-wielding intruder has questioned whether the Huntingdon stabbing spree might have been avoided if police had acted on his earlier reports.
Staff at his shop had direct encounters with the man now suspected of carrying out the attack, which left 10 people in hospital.
“We didn’t fully grasp until days later that we could easily have been victims,” said Ibrahim Wanas, who owns Ritzy Barbers.
CCTV footage shows a man loitering outside the shop on Friday evening before entering and brandishing a knife, sending employees and customers running towards the back room to escape.
“I’m extremely proud of my team; they responded in the safest possible way,” Ibrahim said. “Had they reacted differently, who knows if he might have struck out at them?”
The British Transport Police is investigating whether three separate incidents reported in Peterborough prior to the stabbing spree may be connected.
Ibrahim was not in the shop when the Friday incident unfolded and initially thought his staff were joking when they phoned him — partly because of the camaraderie in the shop and the fact it was Halloween. But the caller’s tone made clear the situation was real. He rushed to the shop and, after checking on staff and reviewing the footage, contacted police roughly 90 minutes later.
Because the suspect had already left, officers did not attend that night. They only returned the following day — by which time the man had come back to the premises. Police arrived about 20 minutes later, but he had gone again. It was not until Sunday, two days after the first report, that officers reviewed the CCTV footage in person.
“That’s when I think they realised it might be the same individual. And we realised it could easily have been us in that scenario,” Ibrahim said. “I don’t feel we were taken seriously.”
He added that the delay continues to trouble the team: “We keep asking ourselves — if police had acted sooner, could the suspect have been detained? Would the Huntingdon attack have been prevented?”
After learning of the Huntingdon incident, Ibrahim closed the shop temporarily to allow staff time to process what had happened. Although they have since reopened, he fears some workers will be “constantly looking over their shoulders,” when he wants the barbershop to remain a supportive and welcoming space for local men.
Determined to prevent the incidents from fuelling division, Ibrahim is launching the Ritzy Foundation, an initiative aimed at supporting young people and opening routes into entrepreneurship. He hopes the shop can become a platform for positive change.
A Cambridgeshire Police spokesperson said the issue had been sent to the Independent Office for Police Conduct but did not meet the threshold for a formal referral. An internal review is ongoing into possible links to Saturday’s events. The British Transport Police is now leading the investigation.
