‘Hero’ of bomb blast stole from bleeding victims in Manchester
A HOMELESS man hailed as a hero for helping to comfort people injured in the Manchester Arena bombing admitted yesterday that he stole from victims as they lay bleeding.
Well-wishers raised £50,000 for beggar Chris Parker after he gave television interviews about being caught up in the aftermath of the atrocity, and he was reunited with his mother who had no idea he was sleeping rough.
But he is now facing a lengthy jail sentence for stealing a mobile phone and a purse from victims in what his own barrister described as ‘appalling behaviour’.
Parker, 33, was also branded ‘the lowest of the low’ by the family of one of the 22 people killed when suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated his home-made device outside an Ariana Grande concert on May 22 last year.
Harrowing CCTV footage played to a court showed Parker wandering around dead and dying concert-goers and their parents, periodically stooping down and apparently rifling through their possessions. Prosecutors said while it was clear he had provided ‘some limited assistance’ to survivors, the images showed him examining coats and mobile phones dropped in the panic.
In the most disturbing clip, Parker – wearing a woolly hat and carrying a bulky backpack – was seen crouching next to Pauline Healey as her granddaughter Sorrell Leczkowski, 14, lay dying nearby. As police and paramedics tended to other victims, the CCTV showed him lifting what appeared to be Mrs Healey’s handbag and examining it.
Yesterday Parker admitted taking Mrs Healey’s purse and fraudulently using her debit card at a local branch of McDonald’s a few days later. He also admitted stealing an iPhone 6 belonging to a teenage girl injured in the attack.
The terrorist attack claimed the life of 14-year-old Eilidh MacLeod from the isle of Barra.
She had travelled to Manchester for the concert with her friend Laura MacIntyre, a 15-year-old pupil at Castlebay Community School on the island, who suffered serious hand and leg injuries.