certainly that is one line of inquiry over the summer there was the attack on london bridge and then in the spring at parliament so people in london are quite skiddish about accidents involving vehicles or incidents involving vehicles. again that's the latest right now. we will be keeping you updated neil as we get more information, several pedestrians injured as a vehicle plows into them in south kensington at 2:20 local time this afternoon, neil. >> neil: amy you mention mentioned this is similarly heavy traffic to tourists and others and i'm wondering what precautions have been made post the london bridge and related attacks also in heavily traffic ked areas on the part of authorities there, would this area around the natural history museum be among those where authorities were sort of beefing up their presence? >> well i can't say for sure, neil. i would assume they are. i mean the police presence has been beefed up in london. there are pedestrian areas right

around there. i'm not sure as to whether or not the barricades have been put up. i can speak for milan where every day you see more big cement blocks out in areas like around the cathedral, the back drop you'll see behind me so all across europe you are seeing really ugly chunks of concrete being placed in heavily traffic ked areas but obviously, the citizens of european cities need that. now in london where this happened it's a difficult place neil because you can't put up any barriers on this particular strip of road off of which the incident happened. it is a really essential artery that takes you as i said from the a4 highway which goes out to heathrow airport, the main airport and then heads into knights bridge so it's a pretty multiple lane road that you certainly could not block. again, i would assume that the police presence there is beefed

up but it's a tricky area to block off and anyone who wants to do something like this is indeed, neil this turns out to have been deliberate act of violence or terrorism. someone who wants to take a car and plow into people is going to be able to do it because there is just only so much police can do if they block off one area, you can swerve around to another and london as you know is a very congested city. it's a huge city with many important sort of tourist and pedestrian chokepoints, so it's a huge issue for police to figure out how to keep it safe. we've obviously they've got their eyes on the transportation system since there was that bomb that went off just about a month ago that didn't go off to the extent that it was intended to. it kind of fizzled but still

there were burn injuries and it was a nightmare for commuters that morning heading to work or wherever they were going at par sons so the police have a lot on their hands. obviously the presence there is up but in terms of the precautions that can be taken in a place like that there's a limit to how much protection can be put up because business has to go on to a certain extent as usual, neil. >> neil: all right, thank you amy very very much. i do want to say people who are watching this right now, it has happened again or fears that its happened again this time in london. again it's too early to jump to the terrorists attack issue but this does seem very familiar. a car jumps a curb, rams down hits some pedestrians this time at the museum of natural history in london. we know several pedestrians who were injured we also have separate reports coming in from the london times site that says that they are severely injured, and that one person has been

apprehended presumably the driver. let's get into sky news and cover there this is coming out of london again the site of what appears to be a driver jumping the curb and injuring a number of pedestrians. >> i'll speak to somebody at the scene and explaining what happened, let's go live. >> on the ground and so that they took the man from the car, put it on the ground, and then 30 minutes later, evacuate the streets. >> and did you see like they hit any pedestrians on the pavement? no. i think there was a car and just as the car stopped the other car and then they took the men on the ground and that's it. >> and so the cars remained in the roads? >> yes, yes. it was on the road yes. >> and you saw at what stage did

the police arrive after you saw the incident involving the two cars? >> it was ten minutes later. ten minutes. >> and what exactly what was happening around so this is a very busy street i imagine on a saturday. >> nothing big. just so the car the man on the ground then 10 cars of police and 20 minutes later, okay we have to move to evacuate and that's it. >> and was there a lot of panic? did it look like people around? >> yeah, yeah, so when i heard it i saw people running, so i see-- >> neil: we are continuing to monitor these developments in london. i do want to alert you to the vice president of the united states taking off shortly for las vegas. he and his wife were making a planned visit there to check in on the recovery efforts in a town trying to get back to normal six days after the worst attack on u.s. soil. certainly in modern history, that claimed 58 lives 59 if you include the shooter himself. we have not heard any official

reaction to the london development, again just to bring you up to speed on what has occurred, someone whether accidentally or deliberately jumped a curb outside the london natural history museum and took down a lot of pedestrians. some were injured significantly others not so much. according to that gentleman it looked like about eight or 10 to his memory and then police pounced on that individual, assumed to be a sole individual one individual in a car. that individual has been apprehended we don't know whether he was injured several times we refer to he. that's why i refer to that individual as a he. we still have with us ted williams former d.c. detective. ted a lot is coming in fast and furious here. so much we don't know this much we do. people are on heightened alert about this sort of thing. not only because of what went down in las vegas six days ago but what could have gone down in new york amid the arrest of three individuals who were planning a pretty sinister attack that would have shutdown

the new york city subway system and aimed for taking out hundreds in new york times square. what do you make of all of this? >> well, it tells us, neil just how vulnerable we are to terrorists. the metropolitan police department in london is one of the finest in the country and in the world when it comes to intelligence, but as amy kellogg reported earlier, these kinds of attacks just cannot be intercepted for the most part because you have someone that's hell bent and trying to de moral ize a country and that very much unfortunately could happen here in the united states. we have not been faced with the individuals for the most part using automobiles as a tool but for terrorists acts but this

could happen anywhere but we need to try to reserve and see if in fact this is in fact a terrorists act. one of the better things to have is they have the individual in custody and they should soon know whether or not it is related to terrorists. >> neil: for londoners and we've mentioned it before, ted we always talk after these kind of incidents we have to get together some time when that doesn't happen, but i always appreciate your expertise, but we do know that there's a heightened terror alert already in london. i think it's at a severe right now. i believe that's close to or at its highest level indicating that an event is likely or that authorities feel is likely, but we also know from prior terror alert warnings they come down ahead of for example, the london bridge attack, back earlier in the summer where there was no such indication. in fact if you went by the warning levels that they had been mitigated somewhat, so what's an average pedestrian, what's an average citizen in any

one of these countries in any one of these cities to do, in new york of course we always hear if you see something say something, as i mentioned with you, almost everything i see around this building would warrant saying something but help me with that. what does that mean? >> well see something say something means that you are trying to combat these kinds of acts, not after they occur but before they occur. what is your neighbor talking about? what is somebody in the neighborhood actually talking about? but the thing about terrorists acts is in these cowardess acts is that you may have a terrorists at any given time just to do this, just to take a car and drive it into a crowd because they're going to do it in the name of isis or whatever have you. this is again where we are most

vulnerable, neil. i hate to be so redundant but it's just about you are helpless and the thing about it is we have to go on living our lives and we have to hope that we can have as much protection as we can in these cities, but we are vulnerable. we are vulnerable in this country. we're vulnerable throughout the world with these kind of terrorists acts. >> neil: ted i'm getting some details a little bit more on this it seems to show that this was not a willing driver, eager to discuss the matter with police from witnesses on the scene that he was pinned down and grabbed out of the car detained by police at the scene after jumping the curb and hitting a number of pedestrians it was a dented silver car. witnesses are reporting we don't have any indication of a make or model and in discriminantly he drove off the street at a very high speed into this coming from a london times website. the london ambulance service was responding to the incidents taking a number of individuals

again no report on what is a number of individuals to the hospital for treatment. we don't know the range of injuries or their severity. just that there were several who were hit by this driver and he was pinned by authorities to the ground after they dragged him from the car. i think we're just showing that individual. ted for a minute i want to go to sky news coverage because they might have a little bit more. he heard a collision about 10 minutes after that collision, security police enters his shop where he was working and told everyone to evacuate. they didn't give any further explanation. they didn't say what the reason that these people were being evacuated but the area as i said it's about a stretch of 400 meters stretching right in front of the natural history museum and the victorian albert museum. it's cordoned off. there are lots of people who

were standing around now trying to work out what happened. they're trying to work out how they can now get home. they're not sure exactly what tube stations are open and as i said we have seen about 10 armed officers going into the south kensington tube station although we must say that this tube station as of about 10 minutes ago these were directing people to that tube station. there is police helicopters still flying overhead, there are many police tapes and police cord ons being erected and police officers and vehicles are at this moment in time are blocking off access to that stretch of the a4. i arrived about 15 minutes ago or so and police were trying to clear the area, they were trying to clear the roads so that an ambulance which left the location at extremely high speed s could get away out towards heading westwards on that a4 the roads that now

remain shut, talking to maxine, he said this kicked off at about 3:00 p.m. this afternoon, right here in the heart of london as police and as we are still trying to work out exactly what has happened here. >> okay, katarina, thank you very much just to bring you a reminder reports of an incident of a man of a car mounting a pavement and hitting a number of people. police confirming a man has been arrested and a number of people have been injured and now you did see katarina, she was standing on cromwell place. the pictures we are having now oh, gosh let's speak to a witness excuse me a witness whose actually at the scene on exhibition road. we have what can you tell us about what you saw this afternoon? >> well, i was in one of the chinese restaurants eating all of a sudden all of the clients in the restaurant hit the floor and then there was all these

people running on exhibition road towards the station really and then all of a sudden i why say a large gathering of policemen showed up in yellow vests clearing up the roads and asking everybody to leave the restaurants leaving bags and things behind really. >> what were people telling you when they were running? what did they say? you must have been asking what is going on. >> yeah. well the people just seemed panicked and running, i think they knew what was going on and those large huge contingents of policemen just saying go, go, run. >> and what did you do? did you run? >> no, we had to leave the restaurant. we walked out, ran away yes. >> all right so when you ran off you didn't even get a chance to pay for your meal. were you in that much panic where you just left the restaurant? >> no we paid for our meal, but

there was quite a few people that ran off. >> really how did you feel when you were hearing this? at this time in london gosh we've had just the fifth terror attack just a few weeks ago so to have people running in panic as you saw, how did you feel about that? >> well it was scary. >> neil: there's been an incident they're calling it an incident not a terrorists incident but an incident that is vaguely familiar and rather familiar to a lot of londoners, someone jumps the curb by the natural museum of history which was putting out a warning. we have reports of a crash, an incident please bear with us it is a bit panicking. these are quotes being picked up by sky news, it's an organization abroad in europe specifically, but this fellow who jumped the curb didn't immediately stop and get out of the car. he was trying to escape from police who were in the area, chased him and pinned him between a wall and it looked

lick a divider. he tried to get out of the car as you could see they grabbed him and pinned him down. we don't know what his status just that authorities did get him, did pin him down and ambulances did address those injured in the area. you might have heard reporters at the scene refer to this as the fifth or sixth such incident involving a motor vehicle trying to run down people sometimes withrocess and again that did not appear to be the case here. we don't know whether this driver was carrying weapons we don't know what his intent was we do know the reaction very very similar to other efforts that we've seen. ted williams still with us all of this at a time ted as we said where we are still very very much remembering what happened in las vegas six days ago, the vice president and his wife en route to las vegas now to sort of get a heads up on how the efforts are going back to piece that city together and then of course the developments in new york where they stopped what

could have been an incredible terrorists attack planned by three individuals relatively young men some with ties abroad to the middle east two at least who were fashioning something that would take out a lot of people and be very similar to as one of them said just like the paris guys. ted, in the case of london what we're seeing here and obviously the fears that reignited in london they've seen a great deal of there, what do you think? >> ted: well there's something indicated is that the individual attempted to runaway. >> neil: right. >> ted: this has been clearly the hallmark of the other london or use of vehicles under the circumstances where the individuals have attempted to runaway. one would have to tell you, if someone accidentally run into a crowd like this, it's more likely than not that the person would want to stay on the scene. under these circumstances here,

this leads me to believe that it is more suspect or at this time. one of the things i think they're having to worry about in london and right now i'm sure in other major cities even in this country as well as other european cities is there copy cats or is this something that's taken place specifically in this area in london and that other portions of london is vulnerable so you've got now, neil, that whole area and the city under heightened state of alert as for even copy cats under the circumstances. >> neil: you know, as you're talking ted, i mean i was just reviewing recent london issues, some involving lots of people, some involving just sort of random acts of craziness. they've been dealing with apparently an asset attack on part of a teenager, just a couple of days ago who was

throwing acid at people and then running away. they've yet to apprehend the individual. another involving a fellow outside parson's green with a knife that has nothing to do with the septa tack but just someone who had a knife and then ran away after trying to stab a couple of people but this is all within the last few days, not part off the record of attacks that are more well known worldwide, even here, what the heck is going on? >> ted: well neil what is going on is that terrorists are beginning to get more sophisticated and more smart. in the past we've known terrorists to use bombs in cars and to bomb places or to go in with bombs that are strapped to themselves. well, the more sophisticated law enforcement gets, the terrorists are trying to stay one step in

front, and again, when you use a knife, when you just walk up to someone in the street and you stab them and it is later determined that this is a terrorists act, that has a very demoralizing effect on the public. when you use a vehicle under these scenario and circumstances , just to mow down a large crowd of people that has a more demoralizing effect on the public. in plain words what terrorists are trying to do is to takeaway our way of life and to modify that life into fear, and we've seen that all over the world. you just mentioned the acid attack. well, we had several americans in rome recently whereas id was thrown on them, so what we're finding is terrorists are trying to stay one step in front of law enforcement, neil.

>> neil: putting it mildly ted you've been very patient. you can just stay there we're getting a few more details here in fact even on the car. some are describing it as a black toyota, i know gray before , others insist it's a gray car but not a toyota so i don't know what good i can do just passing along information that's there but you can obviously say a black vehicle that does look like a toyota pri us actually from the back but i could be very wrong but bottom line, this individual a little bit more than an hour and 10 minutes ago jumped the sidewalk, the curb if you will because it's meshes in with the cobble stone street and mowed down some pedestrians, to a lot of folks it could look like he had an incident, could have been a heart attack behind the wheel this sort of stuff does happen but to many on the scene it looked like deliberate sky news talking to a number of witnesses who said it was very much the intent and when authorities

tried to stop him the driver of this vehicle, he built up speed and tried to run into a divider between two cars and a stone partition. i don't see the stone partition here but i do see him sandwiched between two cars. we've got bill stanton here the former nypd police officer security expert as i was discussing with ted williams a very busy scary week for this sort of stuff. to sort through this and what appears to be something that londoners at least have seen repeatedly. what do you make of that? >> bill: we're waiting for facts to come in so we're going to speak generally. ted was speaking of how the terrorists are trying to stay one step ahead. well we can go high-tech all we want. the bad guys can go low tech. if you activate a terror cell and just decide to get in a car and hit the accelerator there is no way to stop that. the only way you can combat that is by having situational awareness among ourselves,

meaning if we were to walk outside right now you and i, i can pretty much guarantee you eight out of 10 people will have headphones on and their phones not aware of their surroundings and what i try and stress to people is to be prepared not paranoid and to be in charge of your fate. you be aware don't count on the nypd or the fbi or any other agency that's doing a phenomenal job by the way. we need to take responsibilities of ourselves. >> neil: we should stress depending on what reports are getting and sky news and they're very very good, but that they said that police were there within a minute after this happened so it's obviously a well trafficked area. he was not surrendering not giving up the crash and then they dragged him out of the car so we don't know what happened or his status. we do know he plowed down a number of individuals and this sort of thing whether deliberate or whether it's tied to prior developments or not is an

effective but crude means of the putting a lot of fear in folks and i'm wondering given the fact this is a well publicly traffic ked area, what do authorities do? you can't shutdown the whole street. what do you do? >> bill: the gun debate, right? i'm going to bring it back to vegas for a moment. we hear the gun debate so this man had two planes and he was a pilot, so now let's say we wack out all of the planes, you're not allowed to own a plane. so what's stopping him from buying an 18 wheeler or renting a truck and doing the same thing unfortunately it's virtually impossible to stop all terrorism or things like this from happening. again, we need as a culture, be prepared, not paranoid and just know ultimately that the chances of it happening to you are slim, but on those slim chances if something does go down you need to be aware. >> neil: but you know we are used to events that change the way we look at what used to be heavily trafficked sites for example, the white house and

pennsylvania avenue, it's pedestrian traffic only used to be vehicle traffic. that makes sense because it's close to the white house. but what do you do with this sort of thing? you can't just lockdown whole streets? >> bill: it's interesting i just lectured at fbi headquarters, their counterterrorism division and getting in that building, so i would just imagine to myself can you imagine if every building was like getting an fbi head quarter? one, you couldn't do it and number two if you went to a saturday matinee it costs you $ 75. >> neil: but we did it after 9/ 11 now you can't get into any buildings without showing id, and that used to not be the case >> bill: well in this building it is and other buildings you have to show id, but not every building what happens is common, routine and board um are the worst things to happen to security because nothing happens to security personnel, people

get lax, the citizen well nothing happened to me today and nothing is going to happen to me tomorrow, what about five days from now? >> neil: your fear and i noted this morning too walking by times square there was a heightened presence before this london incident occurred and maybe it's a post phenomenon with las vegas and the latest threat that was stopped by these three individuals to blow up parts of times square, but a lot more police. i guarantee you because it's a force i understand they can't be like that every day so to your point a few days from now it will die down. >> bill: absolutely. one of the things my company does is event security and my heart is in my mouth because these folks will go to an event and you want to have a good time and there's something to be said about being totally relaxed but on the other hand, you're a sheep and if a predator these wolves these predatory wolves, terrorism or someone looking to do you harm are out there, you are totally unaware or prepared,

so what i stress is do what if scenarios in your head, have a relaxed and good time but if something were to happen what's my exit point where i'm going to go and where am i goating to meet up with the people i came with. >> neil: can you stay? >> yes. >> neil: thank you very very much just bringing you up-to-date if you're joining us near the top of the hour there's been an incident they're calling it in london sky news reporting an incident that rings horribly familiar for them and someone just tried to plow down a number of pedestrians in this case did. we don't know how many pedestrians. we do know that the driver wouldn't leave immediately and was chased ultimately crashing his car before being dragged out of his car, apprehended by constables in the area. we don't have any more than that we don't know the status of the injuries. just that this is a frequently traveled place along a route that is familiar to those of both live in the london area and

of course those who visit there, the museum of natural history, certainly in new york, frequently traveled and frequently visited and this was the height of that tourist time when they would do just that, so the intent was to try to hit as many people as possible, this was the time to do it. nigel piraj joins us now we're hearing reports that theresa may the british prime minister has been briefed on this whether she is about to make a statement i have no idea, but she's been briefed. this is a familiar kind of pattern of events here. i don't know if londoners are getting used to it or you're getting used to it but your thoughts? >> well you know don't forget of course that we had irish nationalist terrorism for 30 years and london is rather more used to terrorists attacks perhaps in other places in west. as you say this has a very familiar pattern but with one big difference. that the previous people that

have done this have all been shot dead by the police. this individual if it is an icy motivated attack, this individual has been captured and it was the public who first pinned him down but this individual now is in the hands of the police so in terms of intelligence, that could be very useful and the feedback i'm getting, neil, is that underground stations are being closed in central london. i'm just driving into the center at the moment but very much increased police presence and certainly we've heard nothing official the metropolitan police are clearly not only treating this as a terrorists incident but it looks to me like they expect there could be more. >> neil: now, in prior incidents we've seen i don't know how they distinguished between the acts of a lone terrorists or gunman or someone who wants to instigate something, because there have been a number of

weird incidents, the teenager with chemicals. there have been others with knives not as big as those involving, several individuals along the london bridge backed earlier in the summer but it's something bottom line to your point that londoners of late have gotten used to to say nothing of the decades of ex tense dealing with the ira but this seems to have picked up a pace of late am i right or what? >> oh, yes. that is no doubt and of course don't forget it's not just in london. at point, neil. let me make the point, none of these individuals are lone wolves, we call them lone wolves, but in every case there's a network behind them and in every case through the internet and they're expected to bad people and in 90% of cases, those that commit these acts a