‘I don’t want anything like this to happen again’
NOTHING could compare to the horror of losing their loved ones in a senseless terror attack.
But the fact that opportunities to stop the atrocity and help the victims could have been missed is a truth too hard to bare for families ripped apart by the Manchester Arena bombing.
Salman Abedi took 22 innocent lives when he detonated a suicide bomb in the venue’s packed foyer after an Ariana Grande concert five years ago.
Among the victims were teenage sweethearts Chloe Rutherford, 17, and 19-year-old Liam Curry, from South Shields, and Philip Tron, 32, and 19-year-old Courtney Boyle, from Gateshead.
Events leading up to the bombing and the emergency response afterwards has been examined during a long-running public inquiry.
Since it began, in September 2020, the inquiry has heard chilling evidence from 267 witnesses, exploring what intelligence services knew about Abedi, security at the arena, and how emergency services responded.
June Tron, Philip’s mum, has sat through almost every day of the inquiry. And the 66-year-old has today told of her agony at hearing what went wrong.
She said: “I just felt bitter. I just wanted to scream that this didn’t need to happen, it shouldn’t have happened. But I have just got to deal with it as I know I can’t change it.
The public inquiry has been split into three segments.
A damning report on security at the arena has already been published, while findings on the flawed emergency response and
whether security services should have stopped the bomber will be revealed later this year.
Arena operators SMG and security firm Showsec were criticised in the first report for not identifying Abedi as a threat.
The inquiry heard that Manchester Arena started a security review three weeks after the bombing, which led to changes being made and the appointment of Gary Simpson as director of security, safety and risk for SMG Europe.
Mr Simpson told the hearing that security is now continually reviewed.
June, from Harlow Green in Gateshead, believes it’s essential that large venues do all they can to keep visitors safe, whatever the cost.
“The security was just kids,” she said. “The security at venues should have been there in the first place. They have got to have proper security. They need to go through people’s bags. There can’t be enough security,”
The response by emergency services was also branded “inadequate” during the inquiry which heard that only one paramedic was at the bomb scene for the first 45 minutes and many victims were helped by police officers, first aiders and members of the public.
And while June is satisfied that Philip’s life could not have been saved if paramedics got there quicker, other victims’ families do not have that comfort.
“The only thing I have got to be grateful for is that he died instantly,” she said. “But I wasn’t told that at first.
“I just don’t want anything like this to happen again.”
MI5 answered questions over 10 days of inquiry hearings which were closed to the public.
The inquiry heard how 22-year-old Abedi appeared as a direct or indirect contact of at least eight different MI5 “subjects of interest” and was himself investigated in 2014.
Families have argued that the security service should have reopened its investigation as a result of the “cumulative” intelligence it received about him.
However, MI5 defended its decision not to reopen its probe into the bomber saying the service had to make difficult decisions about priorities.
Cathryn Mcgahey QC, representing MI5, said: “MI5 had to choose its priorities.
“Making those choices inevitably involves taking a risk that someone MI5 chooses not to investigate will go on to carry out an attack.
“MI5 had to make those choices on the material available to it.”