The street in central London, with its festive window displays and hundreds of overhead lights, was crammed with shoppers taking advantage of the Black Friday sales when the incident happened shortly after dusk.
Andy Rowe, a former Newstalk ZB reporter, was shopping inside high-end department store Selfridges when panic unfolded after nearby Oxford Circus underground station was evacuated.
Police later said there was no evidence of shots being fired or any casualties, but before the all-clear came, hundreds of people were seen running from the area, and armed police arrived in force.
Rowe and his mother, Wendy, were shopping for Christmas decorations when the drama began.
Leaving the department store as an evacuation began, he asked a security guard what was going on.
“He just looked at me and he had this frightened look on his face, so my mum and I were like ‘let’s get out of here'.
“And as soon as we walked out there were police officers with machine guns and like a full armed squad were all outside. We thought ‘this is serious', so we started walking.”
But with Black Friday making the evening one busiest shopping nights of the year, leaving the area was easier said than done.
“People were everywhere. So think about a crowd when you’re leaving Eden Park after an All Blacks test match and you just can’t move in any direction ... you just have to go with the crowd.
“That was when there was this bang from up Oxford Circus and I saw people screaming and yelling, and that’s when the people around us started yelling and screaming as well, and everyone just stampeded, spilling out down the side streets and running from the noise of what everyone thought was going on.”
Feeling it was safer to be closed to armed police, he urged others to slow down.
“I started shouting ‘it’s fine, don’t panic, don’t panic. there’s police here’ ... but everyone was just sprinting.”
TWO MEN SOUGHT
London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement they had found no evidence of gunfire, casualties or any suspects and that the incident, which lasted for just over an hour, had been stood down.
"Given the nature of the information received, the Met responded in line with our existing operation as if the incident was terrorism, including the deployment of armed officers," the police said in a statement.
British Transport Police posted CCTV images of two men on Twitter, saying they believed that an altercation had erupted between the two men at the Oxford Circus underground station and said they would like to speak to the men, "who they believe may have information about the incident and the circumstances around the incident."
A Reuters witness said panicked shoppers had fled Oxford Street and the Oxford Circus underground station.
The witness saw an elderly lady and a man carrying a child knocked over in the rush. "There were people running in all directions. I didn't know which way to run," the witness said.
The transport police said they had received a report of one woman suffering a minor injury in the panic.
The capital's transport operator, Transport for London, said the Oxford Circus and Bond Street stations, which were briefly shut due to the incident, had later reopened.
- NZME and Reuters
