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Unbroadcast film shows Hillsborough witness was right


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BBC News - Unbroadcast film shows Hillsborough witness was right

 

Well we knew anyway.. But Panorama have some unseen footage that was kept away.

 

 

Crucial evidence from the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster, which was undermined at the original inquest, was true, BBC Panorama has found.

 

An off-duty police officer has always maintained he tried to treat a dying boy after the time at which the coroner said no-one could have survived.

 

His account cast doubt on medical evidence that supporters could not have survived beyond 15:15 on that day.

 

Panorama's analysis of unbroadcast TV footage shows his account was true.

 

Ninety-six football fans died after they were crushed to death on 15 April 1989 during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough stadium.

 

The inquest at the time resulted in verdicts of accidental death but, in December last year, the High Court quashed those verdicts and ordered fresh inquests to take place early next year.

 

The TV footage seen by Panorama calls into question the response of the emergency services on the day.

 

The Hillsborough Independent Panel's report into the disaster - published last year - analysed the medical evidence.

 

It found that given proper treatment, more than half of the 96 fans who died, including the 15-year-old boy, Kevin Williams, might have had a chance of survival.

 

Overcrowded terraces

Off-duty Merseyside police constable Derek Bruder, who tried to resuscitate Kevin, was one of those whose evidence was undermined at the inquest.

 

The Hillsborough disaster was recorded by seven BBC Sport cameras, and a BBC news team, while the police had CCTV and a mobile camera unit.

 

 

Kevin Williams was 15 when he died

The BBC footage was later released to the police and the families' lawyers but it was then locked away as it was considered too distressing for broadcast.

 

Some 24 years on, Panorama has been able to analyse it.

 

It shows how things went wrong from the start at Hillsborough and continued going wrong for longer than has ever been admitted.

 

At 15:06, the football match was stopped as Liverpool fans escaping the overcrowded terraces ran onto the pitch.

 

At 15:28, Kevin Williams was pulled out of gate three and laid on the pitch. Soon after, he was carried across it. A fan who tried to help him believes he was still alive.

 

Kiss of life

Steve Hart said: "I remember shouting to everyone to pick him up and get down there with him, you know, you're looking at people everywhere and you're thinking, obviously my instinct was this lad needs help."

 

PC Bruder was photographed kneeling on the ground giving Kevin the kiss of life, but he was not sure at what time the photograph was taken. PC Bruder told Kevin's mother, Anne, how he had tried to help her son.

 

"He told me then what he'd done for Kevin and I said 'Was my son alive?' and he said 'Well, if you say finding a pulse with the first two fingers... if that means he was alive, then he was alive'," she said in one of her last interviews before she died last month.

 

But the coroner at the original inquest ruled that all those who died that day had been beyond help by 15:15.

 

 

Doreen Jones: "I wanted to touch my son, I wanted to hold him"

This decision meant the response of the emergency services was never properly investigated.

 

A fleet of ambulances was parked outside the football ground, but crews and emergency equipment were not sent inside.

 

Tony Edwards, who was on board one of the few ambulances that entered the ground, said: "I always think in terms of a rail accident. Could you imagine the public outcry if all ambulance crews remained on an embankment simply because they couldn't get the ambulance down to the scene of the accident?

 

"That doesn't happen. They get out of their vehicles and if that's the length of a football pitch, they have to go, they make their way there."

 

Ambulances on pitch

PC Bruder said an ambulance was arriving and driving past as he treated Kevin, but he was not called to give evidence at the inquest.

 

Instead his evidence was outlined to the coroner by a West Midlands police officer. He mentioned only two ambulances going onto the pitch, both before Kevin was carried to the end where PC Bruder tried to save him. As a result, PC Bruder's evidence was considered unreliable.

 

But the footage analysed by Panorama shows that a third ambulance turned up after 15:30.

 

Mr Edwards was the ambulance man in the third vehicle and said the West Midlands Police officers investigating the disaster knew this before PC Bruder's evidence was undermined at the inquest.

 

"They had a video set up, they had photographs and they had laid out photographs as well and it was them who said to me, 'I want to show you your vehicle coming on the pitch at 3:35'," he said.

 

The footage also shows the moment PC Bruder goes to help Kevin. It is after 15:30 and proves he had been right all along.

 

PC Bruder has told Panorama he has now made a complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission about how his evidence was handled.

 

West Midlands Police said it would co-operate with the IPCC and could not comment while inquiries continued.

 

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust said it would co-operate with any new legal inquiries.

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To be fair, the article doesn't say that it had withheld this from the enquiry. It says unbroadcast, which suggests to me that its not been shown on tv. I would have assumed that this has gone through the panel, seeing as BBC were the only tv covering the actual game.

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How and why did the BBC keep hold of 'secret footage' and not release it knowing how important it was to the enquiry?

 

D Notices are a restriction on what can be broadcast and published by the government. They were used frequently when strikes were hurting the country and \ or government and they didnt want the general public to know.

 

I wouldnt be in the least bit surprised if they issued D Notices over Hillsborough, the bastards.

 

People's sensibilities are offending if that's the right word seeing certain situations on tv so maybe they just decided no one should see it then, to protect their chances of a knighthood whatever, locked it away, didnt mention it again.

 

All truely shocking if that is the case and would show how deep the cover up went. Bastards. Hope they rot in hell.

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How and why did the BBC keep hold of 'secret footage' and not release it knowing how important it was to the enquiry?

 

It wasn't kept mate; it was released to the families lawyers years ago and to pretty much everyone if I recall. What they've done here is used this footage to investigate deeper/expand upon some of the findings that the panel uncovered. The person who is behind this documentary was actually there at Hillsborough that day.

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Guest Numero Veinticinco

Not an easy watch at all. Angry and sad at the same time. Those who fought for justice for so long are absolute heroes.

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Jack Straw really was a gutless tosser.

 

What a pair of cunts him and Blair are. An absolute shower.

 

Really tough watching that then. The strength and dignity the families have shown these past 24 years has been nothing short of remarkable.

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What a pair of cunts him and Blair are. An absolute shower.

 

Really tough watching that then. The strength and dignity the families have shown these past 24 years has been nothing short of remarkable.

 

That's the word that stands out for me over and over again down the years. The dignity of the families and the total lack of it from SYP et al.

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It's not just the fact that they all covered it up it's the fact the lot of them are still benefitting from it today. All moving up the ladder because they were all part of it. To this day completely unaccountable and untouchable. It's a fucking joke.

 

Precedent should be set from this whole thing so this can never happen again but you just know it won't.

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Tony Blair...."Why? What's the point"

 

What an absolute twat of a man........

 

Wish there had been something about the FA.

 

The pair of them are just slimy politicians like the rest. They let everyone down and it's a disgrace because this city is labour through and through. You would expect it from the Tories but you would think labour would have sought justice.

 

I reckon the pair of them were just thinking, they obviously can't say it, the SYP can't have been that stupid to have left evidence so what's the point in looking for it. We don't have to do anything anyway the Liverpool MP seats are boxed off every election anyway.

 

It's just one big fucking joke.

 

The thing that riles me more than anything is the thought of people screaming at some of the police to open the gate and them just standing here pretending they couldn't hear it.

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