The driver of a taxi that exploded outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital is being hailed as a hero following reports that he had trapped a suicide bomber inside the vehicle.
Three arrests under the Terrorism Act have been made in the wake of the blast, which occurred just moments before the traditional tw0-minute silence for the war dead on Remembrance Sunday, although no descriptions of the suspects have been issued beyond their sex and ages.
Sources speaking to the Daily Mail say that the taxi’s driver, who they have named as Dave Perry, was initially asked to take a fare to the Anglican Cathedral Church of the Risen Christ in Liverpool, where a Remembrance service attended by well over a thousand servicemen, veterans, officials, and members of the public both inside and outside the building was being held.
Mr Perry’s passenger reportedly asked to be taken to the city centre instead after it became apparent that the roads leading to the cathedral were blocked, “but when they were going past the Women’s Hospital he said to pull in there. It was just before 11. David noticed the man had some kind of light attached to his clothing and was messing around with it, it didn’t look right at all,” the Mail‘s source claimed.
“I don’t know how he’s done it with a split second’s thought but David’s jumped out and locked the car with this guy in the back. As soon as he did, it’s gone off. David’s the luckiest man in Britain as well as the most heroic, if this guy got in the hospital God knows what could have happened,” they said.
“It’s my mate who got blown up. He’s in a bad, bad way,” claimed another driver, Kev Cuthbertson, in a social media post quoted by The Sun.
“He’s a fellow driver on delta. He’s had his ear sewn back on, got burns and shrapnel wounds and other pretty serious injuries. He is a hero. When he noticed the bomb, he locked the scumbag in the car. But took the brunt of the blast,” Mr Cuthbertson suggested.
A fundraiser for Mr Perry has been set up on Facebook by an organiser who praised him for having stopped “a terrorist attack like no other [on] women & new born baby’s [sic]” and has already raised over £10,000.
Police had not officially confirmed the details above or even that the blast was definitively a terrorist attack as of the time of publication, and the response to the incident is ongoing.
Rutland Avenue in the inner-city district of Toxteth has been cordoned off, some residents evacuated, and armed officers and officials in jackets marked ‘negotiator’ were seen operating in the area last night.
Greater Manchester Police have confirmed that the cordon “is part of our ongoing enquiries into the car explosion outside the city’s Women’s hospital on Sunday morning.”
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