A business consultant who was attacked by a machete on a packed tube has told of the terrifying moment he “locked eyes” with his attacker.
Ricky Morgan, 35, hacked at James Poritt, 42, chasing him through carriages after he singled him the businessman on the evening of 9 July 2021.
Mr Porritt, left with a severe injury to his head and bone-deep cuts to his head and shin following the attack, is now unable to dress himself and had to give up his driving licence.
Describing the incident as a “horror movie” or the Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi film The Terminator, Mr Poritt told the Old Bailey Morgan “seemed very focused and relentless and he was just hellbent on doing what he was doing”.
Mr Poritt was en-route to meet his girlfriend and her father for a dinner in west London, when Morgan jumped on the train just seconds shy of the doors closing at Westminster.
The two locked eyes for a split-second, jumpstarting the traumatic ordeal when Morgan took out his machete from his rucksack near Green Park station.
“He’d already singled me out,” Mr Poritt told the Daily Mail. “I found out in court that Morgan thought I was there with someone else, that I was having a conversation with them and in this imaginary conversation I had said: ‘Give it 20 seconds and then we’ll have him’.”
The attacker was heard to tell horrified passengers: “This is not a terror attack, I only want him.”
The incident, caught on CCTV, went on for 20 minutes before Morgan was confronted by police and dropped the machete.
Morgan, of no fixed address, denied attempted murder on grounds of insanity but was found guilty by a jury on 20 May following two days of deliberations. He was also convicted of possessing a machete and a lock knife.
The defendant was jailed for life with a minimum term of 16 years at the Old Bailey on Monday for carrying out what a judge described as “every Tube traveller’s nightmare”.
The incident, caught on CCTV, went on for 20 minutes before Morgan was confronted by police and dropped the machete.
Graphic footage showed Morgan shouting and thrashing with the machete inside the carriage as terrified passengers scrambled to get away.
Sentencing Morgan, Judge John Hillen told him: “Having watched many times during the trial the ferocity of your attack captured by on-board CCTV images, James Porritt is very lucky to have survived.”
Morgan, born in Newham, east London, told a psychiatrist he had been carrying the machete and lock knife around for some time.
The court heard Morgan had a history of low-level violence dating back to the age of 13. He had 26 previous convictions for 58 offences, including the more serious crime of discharging a sawn-off shotgun into a private house.
