Wellington resident Staci Martin was on vacation with her family on Wednesday, March 22, when a terrorist attacker struck on the Westminster Bridge near the British Parliament Building in London, killing three, including a British parliamentary guard officer.
Martin and her family were out of harm’s way during the attack, but what connects her to the story more than her geographic location at the time was a photo she took with 15-year veteran officer Keith Palmer, the man who was stabbed to death by attacker Khalid Masood. Two others were also killed.
Martin’s son took a photo of her with Palmer at Westminster Abbey earlier that day, which is believed to be the last image taken of the officer while he was alive.
“We walked along the outside, and we were coming toward Big Ben. I saw two metropolitan police officers, and they had interesting hats on, different than we wear in the United States. I was thinking ‘scrapbook pictures.’ I wasn’t thinking anything else. And, I walked up, and I don’t know what attracted me to go to Officer Palmer, because there was another person there. I couldn’t even tell you what he looked like, and I just asked him if he would mind taking a picture with me.”
Palmer agreed, of course.
“He came up and we posed. My son took the picture,” Martin recalled. “My family was standing there. He joked around a little bit, and before I walked away I asked him, ‘Does this happen a lot?’ He said, ‘You would be surprised how often this happens.’”
Martin and her daughter went down the block to have lunch at a restaurant.
“When we came out, my daughter and I were getting into an Uber [car]… we were going to have high tea. My husband and my son went right around the corner to the military museum,” she explained. “When we got into the Uber, we went back into the circle from the other direction. This guy started banging on our window and saying there has been a shooting to our left, where we had been earlier — still not knowing this officer was involved or anything.’”
At this point of the day, the city was on high alert, and it became hard for them as pedestrians to get anywhere quickly.
“We saw the helicopter there. We saw tons of emergency vehicles, and we had to detour. It took us quite some time,” Martin said. “Transportation was limited at best the rest of that day. My husband and my son had to walk almost 10 miles back to the hotel. That whole area was shut down.”
As the day went on, it dawned on Martin that they had met the officer in the area that had been attacked.
“We were having dinner, and I said to my family, ‘Oh my gosh, I took a picture with that police officer,’ because we had heard a police officer was stabbed,” Martin said. “I said, ‘Wouldn’t that be crazy,’ and of course they said, ‘There’s no way; what are the odds?’”
Martin was close to becoming sure that the officer they’d met was involved in the day’s terrible events.
“That night we were in our hotel room, and they put a picture of him with his name up on the TV, and I said, ‘You guys, I think that’s the same guy,’” Martin recalled. “They, of course, thought I was crazy and shut me down, until I went back to my phone, and I pulled up the picture. I zoomed in on his nametag, so I could see, and it was his name.”
Sure enough, Martin was able to zoom in on Palmer’s badge and match the name and the face of the deceased officer.
“At that point, my whole plight was not five seconds of fame for myself whatsoever. It was just wanting to get the message to his family of what a gentleman he was,” she said. “He was nice. And, just to make sure that they had the picture, because if that was me, I would want that. Then, it kind of grew from there.”
At this point, Martin was sharing her thoughts about the day and about knowing she had met a man the day he lost his life
“When I first realized it was him, the first thing I was thinking was, ‘Oh, my gosh, my kids were right there. My husband and I, we were right there.’ That could have been us,” Martin said. “I, of course, also started questioning why God would spare me, and why was it his time. Why was I in that spot with this person? What is the meaning of this?”
Martin said she has chosen not to overthink the possibilities but try to get the message out about the fragility of life. She said she is very thankful for her family and her own safety at the end of the day.
“When I posted on Facebook, it was more just to show people the fragility of life,” Martin said. “Those emotions have really crossed over one another and continue on, the what-ifs. And the not knowing.”
She wanted to focus on what the photo meant.
“I made it so important to get the message out that this was not about me having fame, my picture in the paper or anything like that. I made it with my kids, with every reporter I talked to and everybody,” Martin said. “I never wanted to turn this into something about me.”
Martin said it was interesting to experience the attack in London.
“We saw that the City of London really unified and kept going with life,” she said. “They didn’t let it get them down, and they forged ahead right away.”
Martin’s son remains studying abroad in England.
Ironically, it was not the first terror attack that was too close for comfort for Martin and her family.
“It’s crazy because we were in Paris first, and my son flew into Orly [Airport], and we flew into Charles de Gaulle [Airport]. He got an Uber, and he met us. That afternoon, there was a terrorist attack at Orly. So, I feel like it’s just become so sad, but almost just a way of life. It has become kind of the norm, and I just think we can’t stop living our lives in fear of something happening.”
Since the events of the attack on the Westminster Bridge, a JustGiving page, similar to GoFundMe, raised more than 700,000 British pounds (around $869,000 U.S.) for Palmer’s wife and daughter.
“I think this story may have helped humanize him a bit,” Martin said. “I just wanted people to be aware that anything can happen to anyone at any time.”
ABOVE: Staci Martin in the now-famous photo with slain British police officer Keith Palmer. The photo was taken by Martin’s son.
