Maria, her husband Tony and daughter Maya returned from a Christmas break to find themselves in the middle of the Hackney gun siege. But every time they needed to leave their flat, they had to ask permission from the police...
 Hackney siege |
On Boxing Day 2002, a gunman took a hostage on an estate in Hackney, North London. Thankfully the hostage escaped after a week, but the siege continued for a further week until the gunman died in a fire he had started.
Dr Maria Pini lives very close to the flat where the whole event took place. If you were to look out of Maria's window you can still see the two burnt out windows. She says, "At first we thought it would end really quickly, so we weren't too worried."
Then it just became irritating. The police told Maria and her family to keep away from the windows. They were told that if they needed to leave the flat, they should call for armed police. Sometimes they would arrive in minutes, but sometimes it would take an hour. In the end, they went out very little. They had Christmas supplies, so food wasn't really a problem.
At the time, she felt quite safe. Even though the police kept saying that Maria's flat was in the line of fire, they didn't really know where the gunman was. "It was hard to believe we were in danger, because there was so much armed presence outside the flat".
Then they were evacuated in the middle of the night. The police said the situation had become more dangerous and shots had been heard. Because Maria and her family live on the ground floor, everybody was asked to congregate in their front room.
For two days, they stayed with Maria's mother, but eventually decided to return home. They found the second week more irritating. This was partly due to the lack of communication. The police kept on saying "it'll be over by dawn, it'll be over by dawn". But it never was.
The gunman was a total mystery to Maria. She only knew what she read in the press. Maria says that she is left with a sense of disbelief "that something that big and sad could go on so close to you. This is somebody who died very very slowly and unpleasantly". She asks the inevitable question: did it have to end this way?
"It has made what felt like home, feel very very different".
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