Our amazing Saffie, by her proud parents
Youngest arena bomb victim would have lived if 999 teams had learned lessons, says father
THE father of the youngest victim of the Manchester Arena bombing hit out yesterday at ‘failures and excuses’ made by the security and emergency services.
Andrew Roussos said the life of his daughter Saffie-Rose, eight, should not have been a ‘practice exercise’ and that ‘lessons should already have been learnt and in place’ from the July 7 2005 bombings in London and the September 11 2001 terror attacks in the US.
In an impassioned plea to Manchester Arena attack inquiry chairman, Sir John Saunders, Mr Roussos said: ‘With the highest respect, I feel I need to say this.
‘What we are all going through, the failures we are all listening to and the excuses we will all sit through, needs to stop. Enough is enough, sir.
‘At present in 2020, if we’re still here learning lessons then nothing will change. The biggest lesson and wake-up call should have come from 7/7 and 9/11.
‘Saffie’s life is not a practice exercise for the security services or the emergency services. Lessons should already have been learnt and in place.’
Mr Roussos, of Leyland, Lancashire, spoke out after the inquiry heard a moving tribute from Saffie-Rose’s mother Lisa, who spent six weeks in a coma after herself being badly injured in the bombing on May 22, 2017.
Mrs Roussos said: ‘ The day I woke up from the coma, Andrew held my hand and looked at me. I instantly knew. I said, “She has gone, hasn’t she?” He replied, “yes”. I cried and pleaded with him to let me die, too. I did die that day. Inside, I’m dead. My heart is so heavy it weighs me down.’
She said that her daughter had ‘this amazing, magnetic personality that drew people towards her’, adding: ‘She was a pure, gentle, beautiful soul who touched people’s hearts.’ After the hearing,
Mr Roussos said: ‘ We have been waiting for over three years for this to start.
‘It’s horrible waiting to find out the answers that you need because there were so many wrongs. There’s not one thing that went right and they need addressing.’
He said the actions of officials were a ‘shambles’ up to the night of the attack and through the night. ‘Everything went wrong and it’s not good enough,’ he said.
Referring to a mock- terrorattack staged by the authorities in the arena foyer the year before, he said: ‘ Why have these exercises?
Ticking boxes? I’m sorry but Saffie is not a box to tick.’ He repeated his call to have lawyers representing the families sit in at the closed hearings of the inquiry when national security issues will be discussed. Mr Roussos said: ‘We can’t end this inquiry having questions. We need to be comfortable with what is going to happen behind them closed doors.’
Ashlee Bromwich, Saffie-Rose’s older sister, told the inquiry: ‘A child should be able to live an innocent life. She should have only known of love and happiness.’
It came after the mother of another victim, John Atkinson, 28, last week accused the emergency services of ‘murdering’ her son.
Daryl Price, 55, said it was difficult to learn her son’s injuries would have been ‘survivable’ had he not been waiting to be evacuated for almost an hour. Failings detailed so far include how emergency services took 20 minutes to arrive, with just one paramedic initially sent into the arena foyer.
Meanwhile, security services failed to reopen an earlier investigation into suicide bomber Salman Abedi, 22, despite being aware of contact between him and other Islamic State extremists.
The inquiry also heard tributes to 15-year-old victim Olivia Campbell-Hardy, from Bury. Her mother, Charlotte Hodgson, said: ‘Ollie had too much to give. With her determination, she would have accomplished whatever she set out to achieve.
‘She would put 100 per cent into everything but she would always do it with a smile on her face.’
‘Not one thing went right’