A beautician who once dated one of the Woolwich killers said he was ‘lovely’ and just a ‘normal boy’.
Justine Rigden, 26, is understood to have been Michael Adebolajo’s girlfriend for a year when he was a teenager.
Her relationship with the boy known to his friends as ‘Narn’ ended before he adopted radical Islamist views.
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She described her shock after realising her ex-boyfriend was the bloodied man seen wielding a meat cleaver as he claimed butchering a British soldier was an ‘eye for an eye’.
Miss Rigden works for a hairdressing salon in Hornchurch and claims to have been shortlisted as the ‘Face of Essex’.
She said: ‘He was really friendly and really polite, and there was never anything to suggest he would be caught up with anything like this.
‘He was just a lovely, polite boy. He stayed at my family’s house and I stayed with his. He was a very family-oriented person.
‘He had a group of friends from Hackney. They weren’t “wrong-uns”, they were OK, and he used to do a bit of MC-ing, rapping.
‘Nobody can believe it. He was just this normal, regular boy.’
In a video posted on YouTube, the stylist says she admires Jennifer Lopez, because she is a ‘role model for real women with curves’.
Pictures on Miss Rigden’s Facebook page showed her modelling in photo shoots, before the page was taken down from the internet on Thursday night.
Her profile on the website of the hair salon where she works describes her as an ‘enthusiastic member of the team who will make you feel valued the moment you walk in the door’.
School friends of Adebolajo say he lived a Western lifestyle in his teens, growing up in Essex as a Christian with hard-working Nigerian immigrant parents.
Among his friends on Facebook are two serving police officers who knew him from school.
He was also close friends with a soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.Adebolajo was even consoled by friends at the funeral of Lance Corporal Kirk Redpath who died in 2007 when his Land Rover was blown up as it protected a convoy near Basra.
The pair were classmates at Marshalls Park School, in Romford, and spent time at each other’s houses after lessons.
The soldier’s brother Grant, 26, said: ‘What happened in Woolwich was butchery, unbelievable. ‘I’ve asked myself whether he would have done this to my brother also.
‘I don’t know what happened to Michael because he used to be the most laid-back, nicest guy in the world. But I know that if my brother were alive today he’d want to try and make him see sense.’
He added: ‘Describing my emotions is so difficult. I can’t feel anger toward the Michael I knew, because he was so nice a person. We can’t understand it. I don’t think we ever will.’
Adebolajo, 28, is believed to have been radicalised in his late teens by hate preachers Omar Bakri Muhammed and Anjem Choudary.
Bakri Muhammed, who was thrown out of Britain when he was the leader of the now banned extremist group Al Muhajiroun, boasted he had converted Adebolajo to Islam when the boy visited his street stall in London.
‘We would talk about the meaning of life with passers-by,’ he said. ‘He stopped to speak with us and we invited him to Islam.
‘Because he is a convert I can still remember him. At that time there were a lot of conflicts around the world, and in Iraq and in Afghanistan especially. We talked to him about these and he sympathised with the Muslim people, it seemed.
‘He was in his 20s, a quiet boy who didn’t ask many questions. He used to come to our open talks and speeches.’
Despite spouting rhetoric about supposed British crimes in 'our lands', Adebolajo is a British citizen born in London.
His mother and father are hard-working Nigerian immigrants from an academic family in West Africa who settled in London in the early 1980s. A Christian couple, they believed in assimilating into British life, and Michael seems to have forged easy friendships with schoolmates of all colours and creeds.
Virtually all the friends on his Facebook page have traditional British names such as Louise, Kelly, Robert, Craig, Gemma, Lauren and Paul, to name a few. Among them is Matthew Selt, now a professional snooker player.
He was 'just a lovely, lovely guy', in the words of former classmate Stephen Cavalier - who, as a serving PC in the Metropolitan Police - could scarcely have followed a different path.
Speaking at his home in Essex yesterday, Mr Cavalier said: 'It seems odd to say it now, after the events of yesterday, but I remember him as just a lovely, lovely guy.
'I knew Michael at Marshalls Park School in Romford when we were teenagers. He was a good sportsman and just an all-round nice guy.'
He said he was no longer close to Adebolajo, who had requested they become 'Facebook friends' a few years ago.
'As soon as I saw the news last night I immediately recognised it was Michael. I was in shock really when I saw him.'
Adebolajo's dark side seems to have been awakened in his mid-teens, around the time Tony Blair was sending British troops into Afghanistan and Iraq.
Justine Rigden, 26, is understood to have been Michael Adebolajo’s girlfriend for a year when he was a teenager.
Her relationship with the boy known to his friends as ‘Narn’ ended before he adopted radical Islamist views.
Scroll down for video
She described her shock after realising her ex-boyfriend was the bloodied man seen wielding a meat cleaver as he claimed butchering a British soldier was an ‘eye for an eye’.
Miss Rigden works for a hairdressing salon in Hornchurch and claims to have been shortlisted as the ‘Face of Essex’.
She said: ‘He was really friendly and really polite, and there was never anything to suggest he would be caught up with anything like this.
‘He was just a lovely, polite boy. He stayed at my family’s house and I stayed with his. He was a very family-oriented person.
‘He had a group of friends from Hackney. They weren’t “wrong-uns”, they were OK, and he used to do a bit of MC-ing, rapping.
‘Nobody can believe it. He was just this normal, regular boy.’
In a video posted on YouTube, the stylist says she admires Jennifer Lopez, because she is a ‘role model for real women with curves’.
Pictures on Miss Rigden’s Facebook page showed her modelling in photo shoots, before the page was taken down from the internet on Thursday night.
Her profile on the website of the hair salon where she works describes her as an ‘enthusiastic member of the team who will make you feel valued the moment you walk in the door’.
School friends of Adebolajo say he lived a Western lifestyle in his teens, growing up in Essex as a Christian with hard-working Nigerian immigrant parents.
Among his friends on Facebook are two serving police officers who knew him from school.
He was also close friends with a soldier who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.Adebolajo was even consoled by friends at the funeral of Lance Corporal Kirk Redpath who died in 2007 when his Land Rover was blown up as it protected a convoy near Basra.
The pair were classmates at Marshalls Park School, in Romford, and spent time at each other’s houses after lessons.
The soldier’s brother Grant, 26, said: ‘What happened in Woolwich was butchery, unbelievable. ‘I’ve asked myself whether he would have done this to my brother also.
‘I don’t know what happened to Michael because he used to be the most laid-back, nicest guy in the world. But I know that if my brother were alive today he’d want to try and make him see sense.’
He added: ‘Describing my emotions is so difficult. I can’t feel anger toward the Michael I knew, because he was so nice a person. We can’t understand it. I don’t think we ever will.’
Adebolajo, 28, is believed to have been radicalised in his late teens by hate preachers Omar Bakri Muhammed and Anjem Choudary.
Bakri Muhammed, who was thrown out of Britain when he was the leader of the now banned extremist group Al Muhajiroun, boasted he had converted Adebolajo to Islam when the boy visited his street stall in London.
‘We would talk about the meaning of life with passers-by,’ he said. ‘He stopped to speak with us and we invited him to Islam.
‘Because he is a convert I can still remember him. At that time there were a lot of conflicts around the world, and in Iraq and in Afghanistan especially. We talked to him about these and he sympathised with the Muslim people, it seemed.
‘He was in his 20s, a quiet boy who didn’t ask many questions. He used to come to our open talks and speeches.’
Despite spouting rhetoric about supposed British crimes in 'our lands', Adebolajo is a British citizen born in London.
His mother and father are hard-working Nigerian immigrants from an academic family in West Africa who settled in London in the early 1980s. A Christian couple, they believed in assimilating into British life, and Michael seems to have forged easy friendships with schoolmates of all colours and creeds.
Virtually all the friends on his Facebook page have traditional British names such as Louise, Kelly, Robert, Craig, Gemma, Lauren and Paul, to name a few. Among them is Matthew Selt, now a professional snooker player.
He was 'just a lovely, lovely guy', in the words of former classmate Stephen Cavalier - who, as a serving PC in the Metropolitan Police - could scarcely have followed a different path.
Speaking at his home in Essex yesterday, Mr Cavalier said: 'It seems odd to say it now, after the events of yesterday, but I remember him as just a lovely, lovely guy.
'I knew Michael at Marshalls Park School in Romford when we were teenagers. He was a good sportsman and just an all-round nice guy.'
He said he was no longer close to Adebolajo, who had requested they become 'Facebook friends' a few years ago.
'As soon as I saw the news last night I immediately recognised it was Michael. I was in shock really when I saw him.'
Adebolajo's dark side seems to have been awakened in his mid-teens, around the time Tony Blair was sending British troops into Afghanistan and Iraq.
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