Manchester Arena bombing: Father of eight-year-old girl who died rejects emergency services’ apologies | UK News

The father of an 8-year-old girl killed in the Manchester Arena bombing has refused an apology from emergency services for their failure to respond to the attack.

Andrew Roussos told Sky News he believes “100%” that his “warrior” daughter Saffie-Rose will survive if the emergency response isn’t enough.

Saffie is the youngest victim of brutalityof which 22 innocent people died in a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.

An investigation examining the emergency response to the attack found that “critical aspects … were malfunctioning” and one victim, John Atkinson, may have survived it was not for these “inadequacies”.

The report also suggests there is a “remote possibility” that Saffie could have survived had she received “different treatment and care”.

Responding to the report, Mr. Roussos said: “We have had to fight for this. For the last two years, we have been fighting.

“We knew Saffie as a human being – she would do everything she could to survive, and she did.

“She was alive almost an hour after the explosion. She was talking, sipping water, she understood what was happening.

“Saffie did all she could to survive but didn’t get that chance.

“A human soul goes a long way in this. And Saffie did her best to stand a chance of survival.

“And we’re 100% confident that if she gets that chance, she’ll survive.”

‘She will fight to the end’

When asked if he would accept an apology from the emergency services, he replied: “No, I do not accept an apology.

“You know, what I expect is for them to be honest and raise their hands, especially during the investigation, and admit failures because by not admitting failures, how can you change? for the future?

“Now I’ve heard for the past two years, for one reason after another, that the night went well – but it didn’t go well.”

When asked if he believed Saffie would have survived if emergency response had been better, he replied: “100%… because she’s a fighter just like her mother. She’s going to fight. come together.”

Mr Roussos was described the emergency response as “shameful” and “insufficient”with several experts telling the inquest that Saffie could have survived had the reaction been different.

However, Sir John Saunders, chairman of the Manchester Arena Inquiry, concluded that “there is only a distant possibility that she could have survived with varying treatment and care”.

“On the evidence that I have accepted, what happened to Saffie-Rose Roussos presents a terrible burden of injury,” he said.

“It is very likely that her death was inevitable even if the most comprehensive and advanced medical treatment had been started immediately after the injury.”

What happened to Saffie?

Find out that Saffie received tickets to Ariana Grande’s concert as a Christmas present and is delighted to meet her “idol”.

She held her mother’s hand at the end of the concert as they entered an area known as the City Room, where Salman Abedi detonated his bomb.

Saffie was about five meters from Abedi when the bomb was detonated.

She was in the City Room for 26 minutes, during which time she sank inside and lost consciousness but she was able to give her name to a member of the public who helped her.

Shortly before 11 p.m., police officers and two members of the public placed Saffie on a promotional crate used as a makeshift stretcher.

She was still conscious when she was taken out of the City Room, down stairs, through a tunnel, and to Trinity Road, where the ambulance arrived just after 11pm.

Five minutes later, Saffie was taken to an ambulance and her level of consciousness “fluctuated”, the investigation launched.

For the next 11 minutes, Saffie was resuscitated in the back of an ambulance and at one stage, she said succinctly.

The ambulance left Trinity Way for the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital at 11:17am – 46 minutes after the bomb went off – and the journey lasted six minutes.

Saffie was treated by the trauma team in the hospital’s recovery room and went into cardiac arrest around 11:26pm.

She was given CPR but was pronounced dead at 11:40pm.

Saffie’s death is ‘complicated matter’

The coroner of the investigation said he had accepted expert evidence that Saffie’s death was due to her multiple trauma in the explosion.

But he added that whether those injuries made Saffie’s death “inevitable” was a “complicated matter”.

Sir John said there was “considerable disagreement” among experts about Saffie’s cause of death.

Some experts “finally considered it unlikely” Saffie would have survived “whatever treatment she had received,” he said.

Others argue that survival “is not impossible with the best treatment,” he added.

Saffie’s autopsy results identified 69 external injuries along with internal injuries, including lung and liver injuries and internal bleeding.

A team of “explosion wave” experts, using post-mortem reports, photographs and computer scans, determined that Saffie suffered a total of 103 injuries and stated: “Visualistically, this can be described as equivalent to the energy of more than 15 handgun bullets.”

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Sir John said that while he accepted the blast wave expert panel was correct about the nature and extent of Saffie’s injuries, he added: “I don’t think the evidence allows me to say she is completely There is no chance of survival if most comprehensive and advanced medical treatment has been started soon after the injury.

“I cannot rule out the remote possibility that Saffie-Rose Roussos would have survived, regardless of the severity of her injuries, if she had received treatment from an experienced emergency medical consultant before hospitalized immediately, then quickly evacuate to the hospital and receive specialist treatment there.

“I made it clear that what I’m defaulting to is a remote survivability.

“On the evidence that I have accepted, what happened to Saffie-Rose Roussos presents a terrible burden of injury. It is very likely that her death was inevitable even with medical treatment. The most comprehensive and advanced was conducted immediately after the injury.”

Saffie’s parents ‘trying to find answers’

Attorneys representing the Saffie family said “the damning report reveals what the family already knew, that all the institutions that were meant to protect their loved ones had failed on a massive scale. big and unpredictable”.

Nicola Brook, Broudie Jackson Canter’s attorney, said: “Andrew and Lisa, Saffie’s parents have been trying to find answers about what happened to their beautiful daughter for more than five years of grief. together.

“After initially believing that the explosion had killed Saffie instantly, the pain of that loss was compounded by learning that she had lived more than an hour.”

In a joint press conference following the report, Greater Manchester Police, British Transport Police, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue and the North West Ambulance Service all apologized for their response to the beating. bomb.

GMP Police Chief Stephen Watson said the force’s “significant failures” on the night of the attack.

“We failed to plan effectively, and the execution of the planned plan was simply not good enough,” he said.

“Our actions were fundamentally inappropriate and lacking in what the public has a right to expect, and for this, I sincerely apologize.”