During the inquest into the deaths of the victims of the June 3, 2017 London Bridge attack, Tyler Ferguson described his attempts to revive his fiancée 30-year-old Canadian woman Chrissy Archibald after she was struck by the attackers.
In statements made to the Central Criminal Court in London, “I was looking down at her body while she convulsed and released the life from her physical body.”
Archibald was one of several killed during the 2017 attack, when three attackers swerved a van into pedestrians on London Bridge. They subsequently launched a knife attack in the nearby Borough market.
Ferguson added that he was “devastated and inconsolable” after her death.
Archibald was born in British Columbia, eventually moving to Calgary to study social work at Calgary’s Mount Royal University. She was a twin.
The couple had just spent the evening at a Thai restaurant near the River Thames and were walking back to their hotel on the night of the attack. Ferguson recalled how he confided in his fiance about the difficult relationship he had with his father. According to the court documents, Archibald had advised Ferguson to repair the relationship because he could be “run over by a bus tomorrow.”
Moments before the attack, Ferguson said that Archibald stopped walking and kissed him passionately, and told him she loved him.
“On 14 June, I left the UK on the same Air Canada 8 flight that Chrissy’s body was on. Nothing has ever been the same since,” said Ferguson as he concluded his testimony.
The inquest documents also included a conversation with Archibald’s father Greg Archibald, who described his daughter as “gentle but determined.”
“She was tall and beautiful. She loved to read, she loved to run. She loved to ride her bike. She loved movies and would often go to a matinee by herself on a day off. She loved her friends. She liked going to rodeos and art galleries. She loved her cat. She loved all cats. We received pictures of cats she encountered in Europe.”
Archibald moved to the Netherlands after she and Ferguson began dating to join him on an extended work assignment. Archibald had flown out to London to meet Ferguson while he was on a business trip shortly before the attack took place.
After she passed away, Ferguson’s nephew prompted kids at his school to collect 900 cans of food for the food bank in her honour. The effort raised over 1,500 items of food at Nose Creek School.
A memorial to Archibald was also mounted at the Alpha House Society, where Archibald had worked as a social worker before moving to the Netherlands.
The other victims included; Xavier Thomas, 45, from France; Sebastien Belanger, 36, from France; Kirsty Boden, 28, from Australia; Ignacio Echeverría Miralles De Imperial, 39, from Spain; James McMullan, 32, from Brent, northwest London; Alexandre Pigeard, 26, from France and Sara Zelenak, 21, from Australia.