From the moment you read the headline you knew he wasn't a terrorist, there was nothing about the attack - driving a car into pedestrians, stabbing a police officer - that even remotely suggested Terror or that he was an "Islamist Extremist". And, sure enough, a few days later, headlines - or rather - bylines, appearing much lower in the paper, appear that seem to retract it. But the damage is already done - people remember headlines, not bylines or retractions.
But why Terrorist? It's an obvious misdirection - his name, appearance (petty prejudices come into play here) - despite his being born in the UK anyone who kills another person and looks vaguely Middle Eastern or African must be a Terrorist. Not true. Terror is convenient, it objectifies the enemy, gives them a color - a place (over there), a cause, it avoids any uncomfortable discussions about somebody who clearly fell through the cracks, someone disillusioned, despairing, hopeless, the terror in this lies in the fact that this is an overwhelming reality for a large number of Britons, and these attacks - futile gestures of resistance directed against a political process that has for decades now disenfranchised overwhelming segments of the population, against a political system that has seen the rich grow even astronomically richer and govern those who've become increasingly poorer, are not predictable or stoppable under the current governance.
Blame, shift accountability, deception, misdirection, for many the original headline will stand in their memory as the events that actually transpired, and the train will continue to derail...