A victim of the Manchester Arena bombing would likely have survived had it not been for the inadequate emergency response, an inquiry has found.
John Atkinson’s injuries were “survivable” but he did not receive the “treatment and care he should have”, said Sir John Saunders, chairman of the Manchester Arena Inquiry.
Mr Atkinson, a 28-year-old healthcare worker, was one of 22 innocent people who lost their lives following the suicide bombing at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.
A report examining the emergency response to the attack found that “significant aspects… went wrong” and “the performance of the emergency services was far below the standard” it should have been.
“Some of what went wrong had serious and, in the case of John Atkinson, fatal consequences for those directly affected by the explosion,” Sir John said.
The inquiry has heard that firefighters did not arrive at Manchester Arena until two hours after the bombing; only one paramedic entered the blast scene in the first 40 minutes, and Greater Manchester Police (GMP) did not declare a major incident for more than two hours.
Image: Saffie-Rose Roussos was the youngest victim of the attack
However Sir John concluded that “there was only a remote possibility that she could have survived with different treatment and care”.
“On the evidence that I have accepted, what happened to Saffie-Rose Roussos represents a terrible burden of injury,” he said.
“It is highly likely that her death was inevitable even if the most comprehensive and advanced medical treatment had been initiated immediately after injury.”
Emergency response ‘prevented victim’s survival’
In the second of three reports into the Manchester Arena bombing, Sir John found that 20 of the 22 people who died in the attack suffered injuries that were “unsurvivable”.
However in the case of Mr Atkinson, the retired High Court judge said that had the victim “received the treatment and care he should have, it is likely that he would have survived”.
“It is likely that inadequacies in the emergency response prevented his survival,” Sir John added.
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Arena bombing victims ‘let down’
Mr Atkinson, a fitness fanatic whose family described him as their “heart and soul”, had received tickets to the Ariana Grande concert as a Christmas present and went with a friend.
He was standing just six metres away from Salman Abedi when the bomber detonated his device at about 10.30pm on 22 May 2017, causing severe injuries to Mr Atkinson’s legs.
The inquiry heard Mr Atkinson, from Bury, Greater Manchester, lost a significant amount of blood as he laid in agony on the foyer floor for 47 minutes before he was carried downstairs by police on a makeshift stretcher to a casualty clearing area at Victoria station.
More than 20 minutes passed – as ambulances queued outside – before he went into cardiac arrest at 11.47pm and was finally rushed to Manchester Royal Infirmary at midnight, where he was pronounced dead about 25 minutes later.
A member of the public, Ronald Blake, held an improvised tourniquet on Mr Atkinson’s right leg for up to an hour before paramedics reached him.
Only three paramedics entered the area known as the City Room, where the bomb went off, on the night – two of them just a few minutes before Mr Atkinson was evacuated.
He was not triaged, assessed or assisted by North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) personnel during his time in the foyer.
In his report, Sir John said he accepted the conclusion of experts that Mr Atkinson “would have survived if given prompt and expert medical treatment”.
He concluded that medical tourniquets should have been applied to Mr Atkinson’s legs and dressings applied to his wounds earlier.
The inquiry chairman said “responsibility for that failure” rested with the arena’s operator SMG and the management of Emergency Training UK, which was contracted to provide healthcare at the venue.
He added that more paramedics should have been in the City Room earlier and they would likely have “identified the need for urgent treatment and evacuation” of Mr Atkinson.
Image: Police at the scene of the bombing on 22 May 2017
“That did not occur,” Sir John said. “Responsibility for that failure rests with NWAS.
“Such treatment would, I am satisfied, have enabled John Atkinson to arrive at hospital prior to having a cardiac arrest and would probably have saved his life.”
Sir John also said that Mr Atkinson should have been moved from the City Room promptly and if firefighters had been at the scene at the time, the victim would have been “prioritised for evacuation”.
He also pointed out that if more ambulances had been at the scene shortly after 11pm, Mr Atkinson would have received treatment and he would have been taken to hospital sooner.
“Either way, he would have reached hospital before having a cardiac arrest and is likely to have survived,” Sir John said.
“John Atkinson would probably have survived had it not been for inadequacies in the emergency response.”
Image: The victims of the Manchester Arena bombing
‘Mistakes’ made by emergency services
In his report, Sir John said “significant aspects of the emergency response on 22 May 2017 went wrong” and “this should not have happened”.
The inquiry chairman said he had “no doubt that lives were saved by the emergency response”, but added: “Looked at overall, and objectively, the performance of the emergency services was far below the standard it should have been.”
He said GMP “did not lead the response” the way it should have; Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) “failed to turn up at the scene at a time when they could provide the greatest assistance”; and NWAS “failed to send sufficient paramedics” into the City Room and “did not use available stretchers to remove casualties in a safe way”.
The inquiry heard that police officers, arena staff and members of the public were forced to carry injured people using advertising hoardings, crowd barriers and tables due to the lack of stretchers, which Sir John said was “a painful and unsafe way of moving the injured”.
He added that “one of the most emotional and upsetting parts of the inquiry” was hearing of the “despair” of those injured, who could hear ambulance sirens outside but saw few paramedics arrive.
Among the failures identified in the report:
• Inspector Dale Sexton, the force duty officer at GMP’s headquarters, became “overburdened” and made a “significant mistake” in failing to declare a major incident in the early stages of the emergency response. GMP only declared a major incident close to 1am – two and a half hours after the bomb went off • After inaccurate reports of gunshots, Insp Sexton declared Operation Plato – the emergency response to an attack by a marauding terrorist with a gun – but failed to communicate this to other emergency services • GMFRS station manager Andrew Berry sent firefighters to Philips Park fire station, three miles away from the scene, meaning some firefighters were driving away from the incident and past ambulances travelling in the opposite direction • Inspector Benjamin Dawson, from British Transport Police (BTP), declared a major incident around 10 minutes after the attack but did not tell GMP or GMFRS • There was “substantial confusion” over the location of a rendezvous point for emergency services, with each service choosing their own • NWAS declared a major incident about 15 minutes after the attack but this was not shared with any other emergency service
Sir John said “there was the failure of anyone in a senior position in GMFRS to take a grip of the situation during the critical period of the response”.
He acknowledged he had “criticised a large number of people” who he considered had “made mistakes on the night”, adding that “some of those criticisms may seem harsh, particularly given the situation that those individuals were faced with”.
“They were trying to do their best,” he added. “I do understand the enormous pressures that they were acting under.
“They had to do many things in a short time and it may not be surprising that things went wrong. I am not unsympathetic to them.
“But I need to identify mistakes where they have been made because otherwise there is no prospect of preventing them in the future.”
Image: Salman Abedi carried out the suicide bombing
Among a series of recommendations, Sir John said that “in the event that public funding cuts are in the future considered necessary by the government, the Home Office should consider whether some funding arrangement for police services different from that applied in the post-2010 period is necessary”.
Responding to the report, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said it was “a devastating reminder of the Manchester Arena attack and the horror of that night”.
“Without doubt, our emergency services show incredible courage when responding to incidents of this magnitude,” she said.
“It’s right that we reflect and work together to learn from this tragedy. I will carefully consider the recommendations made so far to strengthen our response.”
Sir John’s first report on security issues at the arena venue was issued last June and highlighted a string of “missed opportunities” to identify Abedi as a threat before he walked across the City Room foyer and detonated his shrapnel-laden device.
The third and final report will focus on the radicalisation of Abedi and what the intelligence services and counter-terrorism police knew, and if they could have prevented the attack. It will be published at a later date.
Heathrow Airport bosses had been warned of a potential substation failures less than a week before a major power outage closed the airport for a day, a committee of MPs has heard.
The chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee Nigel Wicking told MPs of the Transport Committee he raised issues about resilience on 15 March after cable and wiring took out lights on a runway.
A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe’s largest airport for a day – causing travel chaos for around 200,000 passengers.
“I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience”, Mr Wicking said.
“So the first occasion was to team Heathrow director on the 15th of the month of March. And then I also spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before regarding this concern.
“And it was following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. That obviously made me concerned.”
Mr Wicking also said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, and that “there was opportunity also to get flights out”.
However, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during last month’s power outage would have been “disastrous”.
There was a risk of having “literally tens of thousands of people stranded in the airport, where we have nowhere to put them”, Mr Woldbye said.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.
The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.
Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.
Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.
“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”
Image: Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.
He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.
“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.
“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.
“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”
Image: Pic: Met Police
Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.
He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.
Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.
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Moment police arrest rapist student
Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.
“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.
“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.
“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”
Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”
Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”
The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.
An 11-year-old girl who went missing after entering the River Thames has been named as Kaliyah Coa.
An “extensive search” has been carried out after the incident in east London at around 1.30pm on Monday.
Police said the child had been playing during a school inset day and entered the water near Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich.
A recovery mission is now said to be under way to find Kaliyah along the Thames, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out an extensive examination of the area.
Image: Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope in North Woolwich leading into the Thames
Chief Superintendent Dan Card thanked members of the public and emergency teams who responded to “carry out a large-scale search during a highly pressurised and distressing time”.
He also confirmed drone technology and boats were being used to “conduct a thorough search over a wide area”.
He added: “Our specialist officers are supporting Kaliyah’s family through this deeply upsetting time and our thoughts go out to all those impacted by what has happened.”
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“Equally we appreciate this has affected the wider community who have been extremely supportive. You will see extra officers in the area during the coming days.”
On Monday, Kerry Benadjaoud, a 62-year-old resident from the area, said she heard of the incident from her next-door neighbour, who “was outside doing her garden and there was two little kids running, and they said ‘my friend’s in the water'”.
When she arrived at the scene with a life ring, a man told her he had called the police, “but he said at the time he could see her hands going down”.
Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope that goes directly into the River Thames and is used to transport boats.
Residents pointed out that it appeared to be covered in moss and was slippery.