North London police are interrogating a 25-year old man about a broad-daylight machete attack on an elderly woman outside to tend to her garden.  Armed officers cornered him in a house and brought him down with a Taser stun gun. Some officers were injured.

Witnesses say the man first swung the weapon at a cat, and then at a passing car on Nightingale Road in Edmonton before he made his way in back of the connected homes where he found 82-year old widow and grandmother Palmira Silva in her garden.

“Someone was shouting and the door was banging. I could hear the screaming but I could not hear what he was saying,” said neighbor Freda Odame.  “I could see that he had a big curved knife, about the size of an arm's length and he was crouching as if frantically searching for something.  He had a crazed look in his eyes so I closed my curtains because I was scared.”

Another neighbor who didn’t want to be identified said, “There was a scream so I went to the windows and saw a guy with a machete with blood dripping from it.  He was standing in the garden and walking up and down shouting about cats.”

When police arrived, they found Silva slumped over in her garden, beheaded.  Cops didn’t know into which maisonette the suspect had fled, and so they started breaking down doors just to get the people out of harm’s way.

“Officers had to do everything they could to make other people safe and evacuate houses and put their lives on the line to make sure this individual did not cause further harm,” said Metro police Commander Simon Letchford.  Eventually, officers cornered the suspect in one of the homes.

“There were policemen trying the front door and the back.  The chap inside wasn’t letting them in,” said 23-year old taxi driver Ricardo Kwiek.  “They got in the back door.  They came out with a man who was struggling and fighting.  He wasn’t giving up.  I could see loads of police fighting with him.”

At least two officers were hurt in the struggle.  We’re still waiting for more information about the suspect.  But the gruesome nature of the crime provided unpleasant reminders of the bloody and unprovoked murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by self-styled jihadists on a London Street a year ago.

“Whilst it is too early to speculate on what the motive behind this attack was,” said Detective Chief Inspector John Sandlin, “I am confident, based on the information currently available to me, that it is not terrorist related.”

Mrs. Silva was originally from Italy, and is remembered around Edmonton for the family for the family restaurant “Silva’s Cafe” on Edmonton Green.  Friends say that even though day-to-day operations had passed on the younger generations of the family, she still did the daily shopping for supplies.