Pc is reunited with girl injured in blast
A police officer has been reunited with an eight-year-old girl she drove to hospital in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing. Lily Harrison suffered a shrapnel wound and a bruised lung.
A POLICE officer has been reunited with an eight-year-old girl she drove to hospital in the wake of the Manchester Arena bombing.
Lily Harrison suffered a shrapnel wound and a bruised lung after being thrown to the floor by the suicide bomb blast at the end of the Ariane Grande concert on May 22 which killed 22 people and injured dozens more.
Her parents, Adam Harrison and Lauren Thorpe, from Heaton Moor, Stockport, were also injured with the latter having to undergo three operations in just seven days after sustaining leg injuries.
Ms Thorpe says at one stage she thought her daughter was dead as she fell in and out of consciousness and appeared to stop breathing.
As terrified concert-goers tried to escape the venue, Pc Cath Daley and a colleague ran towards the scene and spotted Lily’s parents crouched around their unconscious daughter.
Pc Daley, who has served as a police officer for 25 years, decided they could not wait for an ambulance so she drove the family to hospital in her police van.
After she dropped them off and warned medics that an influx of casualties were on the way, the officer raced back to the scene to tend to more of the injured from the blast and later joined search teams to ensure another bomb had not been left.
As part of ITV documentary Manchester: 100 Days After the Attack, Pc Daley was reunited with Lily and her mother for the first time since the explosion. Ms Thorpe told the officer: “We’re just really grateful because without you... it could have been a completely different situation. I know you just say you were just doing your job but we just don’t know how to say thank you enough.”
Others featured in the programme are Lucy Jarvis, 17, whose body was hit by more than
We just don’t know how to say thank you enough. Lauren Thorpe, mother of Lily Harrison.
a dozen pieces of shrapnel. She said: “I don’t remember hearing a bang or anything – just feeling really, really hot.
“And then I dropped to the floor. To be honest I thought I was on fire. I didn’t know what had gone on”.
Lucy was taken to Salford Royal Hospital, where surgeons spent 14 hours battling to save her.
Several rounds of surgery and more than seven weeks later, Lucy was finally able to leave hospital and is hoping to return to college next month.
Charlotte Campbell, the mother of 15-year-old bomb victim Olivia Campbell-Hardy, tells how she has asked her daughter’s best friend, Adam Lawler, 15, to give her away at her wedding to fiancé Paul Hodgson in November.
She said: “She adored Adam, she was his best friend, she did think the world of him.
“He’s my little hero. He gave my little girl the best night of her life, and I’ll never ever stop thanking him for that.”
Adam said: “I want to live my life as Liv would’ve done. Be kind, be good, be funny, be brilliant, so that’s why I say ‘Don’t go forward in anger. Love spreads’.”
Among those who died were Leeds Beckett University student Courtney Boyle, 19; Wendy Fawell, 50, from Otley, and Angelika and Marcin Klis, a husband and wife from York.
Also killed was 32-yearold Sheffield woman Kelly Brewster, who is said to have died while shielding her sister and niece.
Sorrell, who was a pupil at Allerton High School, was hoping to become an architect and wanted to study at Columbia University in New York. Manchester: 100 Days After The Attack is broadcast on ITV1 at 9pm tonight.