The senior army officer stabbed close to his barracks has been pictured, as his alleged attacker is due in court this morning.
Lieutenant Colonel Mark Teeton, 47, suffered ‘at least 12’ wounds when a masked man leapt from a moped and set upon him with two blades on Tuesday evening.
Witnesses described hearing piercing screams as a woman, thought to be Lt Col Teeton’s wife Eileen, tried to fend off the attack near Brompton Barracks in Gillingham, Kent, and urge other squaddies to help her husband.
One neighbour said: ‘The attacker stabbed him about 12 times. This was with two kitchen knives, about nine to ten inches long.
‘His wife tried to pull the attacker away. The attacker didn’t want her though, just the soldier.’
The father-of-two was airlifted to hospital where he remains in a serious but stable condition.
Head of the Army, General Sir Roly Walker, condemned the stabbing as ‘horrific and unprovoked’, while Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was ‘shocked and appalled’.
Anthony Esan, 24, was arrested at his home in Rochester just over half an hour after the attack. Several knives were also seized from the address.
He has arrived at court where he will appear later today charged with attempted murder.
The motive for the attack is unclear, but Kent Police Acting Chief Superintendent Richard Woolley said police are ‘exploring a number of lines of inquiry’: ‘These include the possibility this incident was mental health-related as well as any links the suspect may have with the location of the assault.’
Alex Reynolds, 38, who lives near the scene, said he heard screams and went outside to see a man wearing a cream camouflage military uniform lying on the ground, surrounded by people trying to help.
Mr Reynolds’ Ring doorbell footage captured the screams, with someone heard shouting: ‘What the hell are you doing?’
Another witness, who lives near the Brompton Medical Centre that is close to the scene, described the officer’s wife asking for medical help.
She said she heard the woman say: ‘My husband has been stabbed – is there a first aider?’
One woman living near the scene said she was sitting down to dinner with her family when they heard a ‘huge scream’.
As they got to the window, she saw the attacker inflicting a final stab wound on a person who was on the ground, before fleeing on a moped.
‘It’s very, very scary,’ she said.
Another witness, who rushed to the victim’s aid, told The Sun newspaper the attacker ran at the soldier and stabbed him repeatedly.
The victim had ‘wounds all over his body’, the witness said, adding: ‘Blood was everywhere as I tried to apply pressure to his wounds until the police arrived.
‘When the guy’s wife came out and started trying to pull the guy off he didn’t even try to hurt her.’
It is understood that security was tightened up at the base in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but has since returned to normal levels.
Lt Col Teeton is a chartered engineer working as a course manager in the Army’s Corps of Royal Engineers, according to a LinkedIn page, which shows he has worked in various roles in the armed forces going back to 2001.
Earlier this year he raised nearly £2,500 for Combat Stress, a veterans mental health charity, by running the D-Day challenge in Normandy in June, a fundraising page showed.
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