Manchester Arena Attack: Survivor Stories | I Was There | LADbible TV

I could see that he had been struck in the head by lightning and was dying in front of my eyes, which as a parent you don't want to see. I remember I could see that the roof had fallen in and there was a lot. of smoke and ashes on the ground I saw people running and the way they ran and the way they screamed it was mass panic the atmosphere was really good, it was very lively everyone was probably the same age as me or maybe a little Younger, a little older, but all teenagers are very similar.

It was great. We had made the decision to leave the concert early, so we were going to leave during the encore when I left. Obviously I went first and Eve was behind me. In fact, we rub shoulders with Salman the terrorist. We left immediately after the encore because we wanted to leave on time. We didn't want to keep my mother waiting. We just walked, I mean five six steps towards the lobby before pressing call The bomb exploded There is no police emergency Hello, is anyone hurt? Yes, they hit me with a force similar to heat. I remember not knowing what it was, but my instinct was to just curl up into a ball and protect myself.

I remember I could feel. I was kind of thrown up and down like I was in the waves when the bomb went off. If we hadn't been running, we would have been literally right next to him and we wouldn't be here. I tried to get up and look around to see my friend Amelia, but I was pretty, I couldn't really see very well, my vision was very blurry. I remember looking down, that was the first thing I looked at, it was my legs and I saw like holes in a little bit. of blood and then that and then I touched my hands and I looked at my hands and I thought oh my God, what was this?

I didn't want to worry her, but I realized that she was bleeding a lot, she was losing a lot. blood very quickly and she kept telling me like Millie, I'm going to die, Millie, this is the moment I'm going to die. I remember seeing an arm and the lower part of a leg and she kind of looked at me and checked. My two arms just to make sure it wasn't me and luckily I still had everything and it was still attached and that's when I knew something serious had happened. I saw the people running and the way they ran. on the way they were screaming it was a massive panic one of my daughters was in my room looking at my phone and when I asked her what she was doing she said well I just want to check if martin texted you or tried to call you because his mis mates keep messaging me, they can't find him, all I was worried about was a father making sure Eve was still alive, basically obviously I could see she had been struck in the head by lightning and was dying in front of my eyes , which As a parent, you don't want to see, probably about 45 minutes after the

attack

occurred.

I had the strangest feeling. It literally felt like someone took invisible scissors and cut something. I suddenly felt like he wasn't here. Plus, I needed to call Lucy's mom on mine because I thought, what if there are other pumps or other exits? Then I remember I kept saying to Lucy like, What's your password for your phone? I can't unlock it because my fingerprint ID wouldn't do it. unlock it because I had a fingerprint ID on Lucy's phone and I couldn't understand why it wasn't working and when I looked down that's when I saw that three of my fingers were very badly injured and hanging like they were.

I don't think it was real. I remember I could see the inside of my finger bones and I just touched it and couldn't feel anything. I was just walking through the bodies and like there was a lot of debris and stuff and I ran into Sharon. whoever was laying there was literally in a pool of blood so I took off my belt and wrapped it right above the wound and held it there in place so I saw for you I'll stop it because he was bleeding quite a bit. and I just wanted him to look at the ceiling because if he looked, he looked to his right and there was the

attack

er's leg that was right below and not connected to his body.

I still remember the smell and almost like smoke. kind of atmosphere um, very calm, obviously there's screaming, there's people obviously dying and things like that, but you know it's not like there was a lot going on because people ran away if they could or it was like you were dead, dying or something like that. I got hurt badly on the wrong wall and I looked at this young lady, she was a very young girl, uh, I could tell when she was right to my left and say about five meters to my left, but then I'm trying to focus on Sharon and I can See her out of the corner of my eye and I can see she's screaming and she's just one of those who loves her mom.

She was screaming for her mother and other members of her staff were tending to her. They tried to support her blood flow with her wounds, but unfortunately they did not succeed. I think it was one of the biggest regrets of our time and somehow I was able to save her. The paramedics wanted to take me first, but I said, "Look, I'm not." I'm not going anywhere, you're taking my daughter, I'm not going to make it, so stop wasting time on me, that's my last kind of vision, that's when I do my job and yeah, when the curtains come down and then I don't do.

So, for two good weeks, I was told that she died very, very quickly, she died in a third of a second, which is very fast. I was told there was no room for any active thinking. He was in a very, very good mood. That night I was very drunk and for once as a mother I can say that I was very happy that one of my children was very drunk that night. I went straight to the emergency room and they evaluated me and I immediately went down to the operating room for a 14-hour surgery. Shrapnel injuries are caused by flying pieces of metal.

These injuries were nothing like I had seen before in all my years working in an operating room and I think the only way you could have had experience of that would have been by working in major trauma. downtown or working in the military, the expert said it was like being shot at point-blank range 22 times, so lightning hit me on the side of the neck, severed two arteries that should have gone straight through but didn't, so some reason I finished. I swallowed it and they found it in my stomach, so that was one, the second one hit me in the center of my back and completely severed my spinal cord.

I didn't realize right away that I was going to be paralyzed, but you know, from said, you know, you know, you probably won't walk again, I'll be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life and yeah, gutted, gutted, you know I'm not We're going to be defeated, uh, we're not going to be fought by these extremists. They want to divide us. A great monster is a place that believes in sticking together and we will. If you're going to try to divide people, the worst place to do it is Manchester and I think we saw that.

You know the outpouring of love supports the way that not just Manchester, the whole UK came together and I felt like in my bed Hi Martin Hi Eve I'm David Beckham Here I just wanted to know if we're really thinking about you at this difficult time, I heard how hard you have been fighting and how hard you have been. I also heard that you are angry. Manchester United fans. I send you my love. We are fighting with you and for you. And I hope to achieve it. until meeting you soon, much love, I didn't really talk to Lucy until she woke up from the coma.

I remember she messaged me, she sent me a Snapchat message and she said hi and I was like oh my gosh, like I was screaming and I ran home and started crying, it was like mommy Lucy was awake, she sent me a Snapchat and then she went back to sleep and didn't Snapchat me for two hours and I thought she died again but I was still happy that she was finally Snapchatting when she was awake people thought they already knew what happened Now it's been two years I should be fine by now my parents and my family members said the same thing they just said the thing is I didn't understand how bad it was and I just felt like I didn't belong there anymore I just didn't anymore If I belonged to the earth, I think a part of me died that night, part of me or if not all of me died that night, but my physical self is still here and I was somehow trying to pick up all the pieces and put them back together.

The first two years after the bomb I was very numb and I was like a very angry person who wasn't angry about the situation, I was angry at myself because I suffered. a lot with

survivor

ability, so I was angry at myself for not having worse injuries than Lucy, not having worse injuries than the people who had died, why I thought why hadn't she died when they sucked her back with that tower and they came closer . That glass bridge to the lobby in your mind must have thought that I'm doing the right thing for my sake and I'm going to die with it because of it, but you know the problem is the real culprit in all of this, it's not.

The people who are used to carrying out these atrocious tasks are the organizations, the ideology behind them that is really to blame, they don't put the bombs on themselves, they send other people's children and their sons and daughters to carry out accomplish those tasks so that That's why talking to young people is so important to me. He said he was Muslim. He said he was doing this as God's work. Wellbeing as a Muslim. I felt that what I did that night was a symbol of what true Islam is, I believe, Islam and the teachings that I was taught as a child, those are the basic principles that allowed me to first think about helping these people in First of all, I know how lucky I am and Eve must still be here because we shouldn't be here, so she went to Manchester Children's Hospital and she was there for nine months, so it was a long time and again, given her injuries, you know that's not resisted.

There's a lot of hope for her, you know, very much like a dad, she's defied the experts, she's now back in school full time, she goes to a different school, she now goes to a special needs school, so He is in a wheelchair, he will probably need care. for the rest of her life 24 hour attention from her many times when I said to myself you know what, let's go jump off a bridge and get it over with. I can't take it anymore, but that was just this voice. Telling me that what is mine, if you believe it now, you will not see what is planned for you, there is something so big in life that you may have to go find it, but keep going, keep going and it will be so.

Alright, I decided to forgive the guy who did the attack in the

arena

, and for me, forgiveness is really about freeing my soul and allowing myself to retain my own power. Without that forgiveness, my head would have been filled with anger. and hate and that would have resulted in me not functioning as a mother, wife or grandmother. In September this year I am going to climb Kilimanjaro with one of the Salford Royal nurses who cared for me and one of the members of the public. That came and helped. I hope to raise a million pounds for the spinal injury association of which I am a trustee.

I don't think about the attackers anymore, they are irrelevant to me. I'm moving forward with my life as much as I can, I mean I can't walk long distances, I can't, but I'm fine, I can do some things and I'm happy with that considering what happened this year. I actually went to college with Lucy. We have, we take the same course and we live on the same floor. I think you have to think about the good things that have come out of this situation. Lucy and I have been close for life as we always will. Let's be friends, we always know how each other feels and we are always there for each other.

I can't bring him back. I couldn't save him from what happened, but now I can do this for him so that his death didn't happen. No wonder that was the first chance we had to see what was happening in the north tower, probably the worst 30 seconds of my life, furniture, paper and people being dragged through those holes in the building and out against its willpower.