Armed Intruder Captured in Garden at Palace as Charles and Diana Slept

A man attacked two police guards with a knife and hammer in the Kensington Palace garden early Wednesday but did not get inside, where Prince Charles, Princess Diana and other members of the Royal Family were sleeping, police said.

The masked intruder was tackled and handcuffed before he could breach the wall around the 17th-Century red-brick palace near Embassy Row in southwest London’s fashionable Kensington district, Scotland Yard reported. The two policemen suffered minor injuries.

Scotland Yard said Bela Mark Stifter, an unemployed 27-year-old from Reading in Berkshire, west of London, was charged with being equipped for theft and causing bodily harm to the two policemen from the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Group.

Kensington Palace, on the western edge of Kensington Gardens near Hyde Park, has been the London home for princes, princesses and royal dukes and duchesses since the mid-18th Century.

Buckingham Palace said the Prince and Princess of Wales and their two sons, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were in their apartments when the incident occurred at about 1 a.m.

Princess Margaret, who is the sister of Queen Elizabeth II and also lives at Kensington Palace, is vacationing in the Caribbean. Charles and Diana flew to Portugal later Wednesday on an official visit.

Scotland Yard said that patrolman Mark Moraviec spotted a man wearing a ski mask “in the gloom close to a garden wall” and challenged him.

The man threatened Moraviec with a hammer and started walking away quickly, but the policeman chased him and called for help, Scotland Yard said.

Within seconds, Moraviec and policeman Christopher Durward-Akhurst, who had rushed to the scene, tackled the man.

“A violent struggle took place in which both officers were hit on the head with a hammer,” Scotland Yard said.

The masked man eventually was overpowered, handcuffed and taken to Kensington police station for questioning.