The immediate aftermath: the victims who had been in the Hart Space

The immediate aftermath: the victims who had been in the Hart Space

¶45. Having seen AR enter the Hart Space, Mr Poland slightly reversed his taxi (“half of a three-point turn”), in order to be in a more convenient position to drive away. His hope was that AR had gone into the building to collect the money to pay the fare.¹²⁴¹²⁴ T/S: 13/6/14-23. Distressingly, the screams during the attack were recorded on the audio of the dashcam in Mr Poland’s taxi, and could be heard at 11:46:06, 29 seconds after AR first entered the building.¹²⁵¹²⁵ ILT000017.

¶46. The first child to exit was Child C3, who ran from the building via the open ground floor door at 11:46:15, some 38 seconds after AR had entered the building. The front-facing dashcam captured the image of two more children leaving the building at 11:46:18 prior to the taxi being driven back to Hart Street, thereafter departing the scene. Mr Poland, in driving away, caused Child C3 to change direction (she had to run round Mr Poland’s car). Mr Poland exited the scene at this stage, with more of the escaping girls visible in his rear-view mirror. Mr Poland did not call the police at this stage or immediately afterwards. I return to Mr Poland’s conduct at paragraph 92, below.

¶47. The chronology of those escaping was as follows:¹²⁶¹²⁶ T/S: 10/46/6-56/6 (evidence of DCI Pye, relying upon the CCTV footage). All these timings are corrected for the error in the CCTV timings, the CCTV being 15 minutes and 26 seconds slow.

¶a. Child C3, as above, was the first to get out and exited at 11:46:15;

¶b. Within three seconds, by 11:46:18, two more children followed Child C3 out;

¶c. Between 11:46:19 and 11:46:24, a period of five seconds, six more children exited. Thus, nine girls had escaped by this stage;

¶d. They were followed by Ms Lucas (who of course by this time had been seriously injured with a number of stab wounds);

¶e. Ms Lucas stopped at the door to usher three more children (who would initially have been behind her) out of the building. Thus, 12 girls had escaped by this stage;

¶f. Ms Lucas had her mobile telephone in her hand at the doorway;

¶g. As the third girl ushered out by Ms Lucas started to move across the car park, Ms Lucas herself started to move away from the door running across the car park at 11:46:27. As she ran across the car park Ms Lucas had her hands on her telephone;

¶h. Immediately behind Ms Lucas a further 10 girls came out, in quite quick succession, but with a bit of a gap between the last two of this group who were Child C5 and Child C7. Alice was the seventh girl within this group and the 19th in sequence to leave (as I shall detail below, Alice collapsed by a BMW car parked in the car park). This group all left the doorway within about five seconds of Ms Lucas having left, that is to say by 11:46:32. By this stage, 22 girls had escaped;

¶i. As she ran across the car park, Ms Lucas was connected in the 999 call she was making. There was a slight difference in the timing as recorded on the device (11:46:31) and from the network provider (11:46:33).¹²⁷¹²⁷ MERP001610/3; MERP000585; MERP001385 – Disclosed but not published due to sensitive content. While I am satisfied that Ms Lucas was only connected on her 999 call once out in the car park, she may have started to try to dial earlier attempting to get through to the emergency services;

¶j. Child C1 attempted to leave the building at 11:46:46 but was pulled back inside by AR. She managed finally to escape some 13 seconds later at 11:46:59, only to collapse in the car park to one side of the open door at 11:47:12. She was the 23rd girl to get out.

¶48. The three children left inside were Bebe, Elsie and Child X.

¶49. Tragically, Bebe’s and Elsie’s injuries were unsurvivable, and they both died in the upstairs of the building.

¶50. Child X – who had special educational needs – was shielded bravely in the upstairs lavatory cubicle by Mrs Liddle; they were escorted out once AR had been arrested. It is appropriate to repeat here the impact evidence of Child X’s mother who said that “Heidi had saved my daughter’s life” and “I owe everything to Heidi for having the foresight to protect my daughter”.¹²⁸¹²⁸ T/S: 6/18/7-13.

¶51. I have addressed the timing of the 999 call which was connected as Ms Lucas ran across the car park. Ms Lucas was the first person to call 999 in response to the attack. Despite her injuries she told the operator that there had been multiple stabbings and injuries at Hart Street by a single “boy”. She also managed to flag down Mr Joel Verite and Mr Marcin Tyjon who were driving down Hart Street. This was significant because, as I shall summarise below, both Mr Verite and Mr Tyjon were able to intervene to assist as best they could. Given her very significant injuries, Ms Lucas did extremely well to convey this information to the police and flag down Mr Verite and Mr Tyjon.

¶52. I wish to stress, consistent with the observations of Mr Justice Goose, that in my view Ms Lucas was concerned to try to save as many children as she was able, having herself been attacked by AR at an early stage. As the judge observed, AR stabbed Ms Lucas five times to her head, back, shoulder blade and arm. She required a blood transfusion. Her spinal vertebrae, a rib and a shoulder blade were each fractured by the knife blows inflicted by AR, all of which injuries were the result of blows of severe force. Internally, Ms Lucas suffered a bilateral haemopneumothorax; when the area between the lung and chest wall contains both air and blood.

¶53. For some of the parents of the victims, it is a circumstance of acute sadness and other understandably strong emotions that their daughters ended up left alone with the murderous perpetrator, AR.

¶54. I therefore want fully to acknowledge the bravery of those girls who courageously helped each other and battled to get out, some of them being (by the latter stages) without an adult alongside them as they did so. Theirs was a terrifying ordeal. I hope that through the family impact evidence, the voice of these girls has been heard.

¶55. At the same time, given this was an exceptionally violent, unheralded and fast-moving event, it would in my view be misconceived for commentators on social media (or otherwise) to seek to blame Ms Lucas for not remaining inside the Hart Space for longer than she did, not least given the grave injuries Ms Lucas had herself sustained.

¶56. It is, I hope, possible to acknowledge the awfulness of the situation which the girls faced, some of them eventually alone as they tried to escape, without translating this into some kind of blame on the part of Ms Lucas.

¶57. In my assessment, I repeat that Ms Lucas did all she reasonably could.