Jo Cox, a member of the British Parliament representing Batley and Spen, died on Thursday, June 16, following an attack in Birstall, CNN reports. She was shot and stabbed outside a library in West Yorkshire.
According to the Daily Mail, Cox, 41, intervened when she saw two men fighting outside. She was injured and left on the pavement bleeding. One bystander claims that they could hear one of the men shouting, “Britain First.”
The BBC reports that Cox was taken via ambulance to Leeds General Infirmary after the incident. Authorities, meanwhile, arrested an unidentified 52-year-old man near Market Street in Birstall, West Yorkshire.
“There was a guy who was being very brave and another guy with a white baseball cap who he was trying to control, and the man in the baseball cap suddenly pulled a gun from his bag,” an eyewitness told the BBC. “The man stepped back with the gun and fired it, and then he fired a second shot. As he was firing he was looking down at the ground. He was kicking her as she was lying on the floor.”
Another onlooker told the Daily Mail that the third time Cox was shot was near her head. The man was reportedly stabbing her at the same time.
Cox, born in Batley, graduated from Cambridge University in 1995 and was elected last year. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, spoke out following the incident.
“Utterly shocked by the news of the attack on Jo Cox,” he tweeted on Thursday. “The thoughts of the whole Labour Party are with her and her family at this time.”
This story is still developing.
