Hillsborough victim tried to swap ticket, inquests told
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Version 0 of 1. A 19-year-old man who died in the crush on the terraces at Hillsborough was last seen by his friends trying to swap his ticket for a seat in the stands, inquests into the disaster have heard. Paul Carlile, however, was identified on BBC footage in “pen” three, and later pen four of the Leppings Lane standing terrace, where the lethal crushes took place that killed 96 people at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. One of four friends he was with outside Sheffield Wednesday’s football ground, Paul Murray, said they had split up when Carlile went to a nearby pub to see if he could exchange his ticket. No evidence about how Carlile became trapped in the subsequent crush or was removed from it has been established by the original 1989 or more recent investigations, the inquests, sitting in Warrington, heard. Two South Yorkshire police detective constables on duty that day, Richard Goulding and Philip Pont, gave evidence that they approached the back of the Leppings Lane stand after hearing there were problems in the ground. They said a group of Liverpool supporters then approached them carrying Carlile at shoulder height, then put him on the floor in front of them, and one person said: “Can you do something for him, mate?” Goulding said he gave Carlile mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and Pont tried chest compressions in an effort to revive him, but that the teenager showed no signs of life before they started, and then did not respond to their efforts. Pont described Carlile as “motionless, purple and blue in the face, and not breathing”, when they first came across him. Goulding said he had had first aid training, although he could not recall how long it was before the disaster, and that he checked Carlile for a pulse at the start but did not find one. He said did not remember how long they had tried resuscitation. When Carlile did not revive, an ambulance officer checked for signs of life but they believed he was dead. “We realised we weren’t achieving anything,” Goulding told the court. “That’s when we looked around and saw that more casualties had just been sort of laid on the ground around us.” He described the scene as “chaotic”, with Liverpool supporters “streaming out” and Leppings Lane open to traffic with pedestrians going by, and “a number of individuals”, dead or critically injured, laid on the ground. Goulding said he used crush barriers and police officers’ overcoats to screen off the dead bodies from view, “just for public decency”. Carlile was then taken to the gymnasium at the ground, which South Yorkshire police used to house the dead bodies brought from the Leppings Lane terrace. His body was later taken to the Medico-Legal centre in Sheffield, where his uncle identified him at 8am the following day. Matthew Hill, a barrister representing the coroner, Sir John Goldring, read from a statement written by Paul’s mother, Sandra Stringer, which the inquests heard in full last April. The teenager was said to have been very close to his mother and grandmother, sisters and brother, and used to play with his nieces Tori and Katie. He loved football and was an avid Liverpool supporter, his mother said. He had completed his apprenticeship as a plasterer on 14 April 1989, the day before the match. Sandra Stringer and Paul’s father James, his sisters Donna and Michelle, nieces, nephew, and other family were in the public seats in the courtroom, listening in silence to the evidence. The inquests continue. |