CHURCH ATTACK: Accused man `civil and polite'

EDEN STRANG, the 26-year-old accused of a sword attack which left 11 parishioners injured, is believed to have come to London from Glasgow where he was studying.

A computer graduate, Mr Strang was believed to have set up a company - OCP Ltd - with his younger brother, Jamie, but which closed last year.

Although he is thought to have started a new business in August, no accounts have been filed so far.

Yesterday, police were investigatingreports that Mr Strang had been stabbed while waiting at a cash machine in Glasgow in 1991. It was also said that he had been racially abused later that year.

Mr Strang and his wife, who married three years ago, made their home with their five-year-old daughter in Thornton Heath, south London. His wife worked as a part-time assistant for a nearby pharmacist. Neighbours near the couple's Victorian terrace described Mr Strang as "civil and polite".

The young man, said by police to have suffered from depression, had been seen wandering the streets.

Lisa Elliot, 34, said yesterday: "He was a very quiet person and I would only see him when he would take his little girl to school."