Buckley woman and young daughter helped the wounded in Manchester terror attack
A Buckley woman has spoken of how she and her daughter came to the aid of an 11-year-old girl who had been injured in the Manchester terror attack that killed 22 people.
Vanessa Brown had been picking up her daughter Emily, 11, and her 18-year-old nephew from Llangefni , at the time of the blast in the foyer of the Manchester Arena.
Mrs Brown told the Daily Post how she and Emily and Benjamin – who had got the tickets for Ariana Grande as a Christmas present – helped the youngster into her car and wrapped a t-shirt around her to help stem the bleeding from her wound.
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She described a scene of panic and chaos in the moments after the suspected suicide bomber detonated their explosive device.
Mrs Brown said: “I’d parked at the bottom of the stairs at the side entrance. Then I heard a big bang. At first I thought it must have been a car crash.
“Then I saw people running and heard people screaming.
“Emily came to me in tears and Ben’s face was shocked. She was in quite a state. I just knew that it had been a terrorist attack and decided that we should stay put in the car.
(Photo: Andrew Forgrave)
“We saw an 11-year-old girl with her mum and she had hurt her leg which was bloodied because of shrapnel. We helped them into our car and I got an old T-shirt to wrap around her wound. A policeman then came and tore off part of her jeans and bandaged her leg.
“We tried to get help from an ambulance and they asked me if it was life-threatening which made me think that there must be others who had been more badly injured. I offered to take her to the Manchester Royal Infirmary but a policeman said it was chaos there. He then carried her on his shoulder like a fireman’s lift and took her to Victoria station where they had set up a triage centre.
“I saw armed police and we there stuck because we were blocked by ambulances.
“A policewoman advised us to leave our car but I said that we lived in Wales and couldn’t walk away.”
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Mrs Brown said when she and the youngsters got home, the shock of what happened hit her.
She added: “We got home about 1am and sat down with a panad, knowing that people had died. It was then that it hit us.
(Photo: PA)
“Ben didn’t have battery on his phone and Emily wanted to wait another two minutes at the end of the concert. She also wanted to go and buy a hoodie. It was lucky for them that he said that they should go when they went because two minutes later they missed the bomb going off at the same entrance they went through. You think: ‘What if?’
“It’s possible that they had walked down the steps when the bomber had walked down and maybe he had waited because there were not enough people there. The bomber could have been on top of the stairs and they could have just passed him and reached the bottom of the stairs.”
(Photo: PA)
Vanessa added: “My boss was also there and had gone to look for one of his daughters and saw all these bodies. Luckily, his daughter was alright.
“We saw a lot of other little girls on their own and we got them into the car and spoke to their mums on the phone.
“Ben was a great help and cool. Emily said she had seen a lot of smoke and was worried it would come over them and that everybody would die. She’s alright today and is at home listening to Ariana Grande. I’m just thinking how will it effect her in the future?”
