The moment a father feared the worst
A JEWISH father has described the nightmare moment when he believed his 14-year-old daughter was a victim of the terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena.
With his voice still trembling with emotion as he relived the terrifying ordeal, Joel Lever told the JC: “I feared the very worst.”
Mr Lever’s daughter and three friends were at the Ariana Grande concert targeted by suicide bomber Salman Abedi.
Mr Lever had arranged to meet the girls, who attend King David High School, at the venue after the show to drive them home.
He said: “I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs having texted my daughter just before 10.30pm to tell her to leave from the exit above.
“All of a sudden this bang came from the top of the stairs from the very same area I knew they would be walking out from.
“It literally made me shudder and I felt it go right through my chest.
“The doors of the arena flung open and there was just this stampede of people — like a cascade.
“I still hadn’t heard from my daughter, and my thoughts then turned to whether or not there would be a second bomb. My heart just sank.
“I just couldn’t get hold of my daughter. Parents were screaming, kids were screaming, everyone was falling over each other, sirens were wailing, police officers were shouting ‘get back!’. It was horrendous and surreal. A nightmare.”
Mr Lever, who lives in Whitefield, in north Manchester, said he felt “like I’d just won the lottery” when he eventually received a phone call from his daughter, who he asked the JC not to name.
The four girls avoided being caught in the blast only because they had been told by staff to exit the venue by a different route.
Mr Lever said: “Finally I got hold of my daughter, took her out to the car and we made a quick getaway. Thankfully she’d done as I asked so she’d been near the exit. We only found out later that it was a terrorist attack.
“As we drove away we saw the police cars and ambulances pouring towards the venue.”
Mr Lever, who appeared in ITV’s Strictly Kosher series about Manchester’s Jewish community five years ago, described the perpertrators of the attack as “animals”.
He said: “They’ve been waiting to do something in Manchester for a while now. It’s despicable, and it’s about time someone stood up to them and did something about it.
“They’re animals, with no respect for human life. Life’s sacred, but they’re not interested in that. It turns my stomach. Mr Lever said his daughter and her friends had gone to school on the day after the attack because they were due to take exams.
A spokeswoman for King David High School said several of its students had been at the concert. “They have access to a student welfare officer should they choose to come in,”
she said.
I couldn’t get hold of my daughter — a nightmare’