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Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Telegraph
I almost died in the London bombings. I looked down and saw that half my body was gone
On the morning of the July 7 bombings in 2005, marketing manager Martine Wright was working her way from Harringay, north London, to her office at St Katherine Docks near the Tower of London. It was later than usual – the previous night she had been out celebrating with her work colleagues following the news that London had won its bid to host the 2012 Olympics, and she'd overslept. There was a signal failure on the Northern Line, and the 52-year-old had what she now describes as her 'sliding doors moment'. 'I thought, 'Am I going to get off, go above ground and get the bus to Tower Hill, or shall I stay on the Tube?' I decided to stay on, and so one of my last memories was running up the escalator at Moorgate, turning right at the top and seeing the Circle Line train in the platform, running towards it and thinking, 'What a result.'' As she was rushing, she didn't get on her usual carriage, but her favourite seat was free – one in the corner. She picked up a paper, filled with jubilant articles about the Olympics, and pondered buying tickets for the opening ceremony. Then the bomb went off. 'I don't remember a noise, or a big bang. What I do remember is a flash of light, and it was a light that was all-consuming for a second. I remember thinking, 'What the hell is going on?'' Shehzad Tanweer, a 22-year-old Muslim extremist from the Leeds suburb of Beeston, had detonated a bomb hidden in a rucksack, as part of a coordinated attack on London that killed 52 people and injured hundreds more. Disorientated, Martine found herself surrounded by mangled metal and debris from the blast. She was yet to realise she had lost both her legs. 'I just remember, in the beginning, trying to get up, and I thought, 'Why can't I get up?'' Next to her were two survivors: Andrew Brown, electrocuted by live wires, and Kira Mason, with a severed arm. Seven passengers in the carriage had died, along with Tanweer. 'The screams were awful. I can't really describe what they were really like, and then people started to come past. It must have been the station master. He was talking to me through this hole. 'I had no concept of time. I just have memories; this gentleman talking to me, saying, 'It's OK, it's OK'. Everyone's just shouting, 'Help! Help!' 'I remember trying to pull myself out, and then seeing this figure coming up. This was my guardian angel, Liz Kenworthy. I could see Liz, long blonde hair and blue eyes, coming towards me.' Kenworthy was an off-duty police officer, and immediately got to work tending to both Andrew and Martine, gathering anything to use as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. 'I remember one tourniquet was a belt,' recalls Martine, 'and I remember pulling this belt and thinking I felt like [a character] out of a John Wayne Western, like I used to watch with my dad on Sunday afternoon. And all I kept saying to Liz was, 'Please tell my mum and dad I'm OK.' The irony was that I wasn't OK.' Slowly, the walking wounded were evacuated through the tunnels, leaving only the most severely injured behind. Martine had to be cut out of the twisted metal, although she has no recollection of this. Having lost 80 per cent of her blood, Martine spent over a week in a coma and it took almost two days of anguish before her parents finally found her, having spent the days ringing round the city's hospitals. 'I just remember waking up in [the] Royal London [hospital] eight days later. James, my intensive care nurse, saw that I'd woken up a bit, and had to tell me that I'd lost my legs. I looked down and, you know, I saw half my body gone.' Heavily drugged, Martine went back to sleep, but the next morning reality hit her. 'I thought I was going to die. I wrote a letter, got the nurse to get me paper, but I couldn't write. I asked to have my ashes scattered on Haad Yao Beach, Koh Phangan – my favourite place in Thailand.' Martine spent 366 days in hospital, firstly at the Royal London and then at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, in a rehabilitation centre for amputees. Out of all those who survived the bombings – passengers on two other Tube trains and a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square – Martine was the worst injured, and at first felt bitter and resentful. 'I went down to the physio, and met about five or six of the other victims. I looked around that room and I thought, 'Oh, you've got one arm missing, you've got one leg missing, you've got one foot missing. I've lost two legs [above the knee]… Why?' And then I found out that 52 people had died. I had no idea that so many people had died that day.' Martine began talking to the other survivors, who make up what is now known as the 7/7 Club. 'That is a club that you would never choose to belong to, but a club where all you've got to do is walk into a room and see that person's eyes and you've got this deep understanding of each other.' And gradually, amid the trauma of what had happened, Martine discovered a new purpose. 'I suddenly found myself holding hands with people and looking into their eyes, and I felt like I had a role to play, to say, 'It's going to be OK'. And I think now, looking back, that was really important for me in my healing process, thinking, 'I can help people, I'm not useless', reminding people that we were actually the lucky ones.' Martine campaigned for better compensation for the 7/7 victims and, in 2009, discovered wheelchair volleyball. With the help of her physiotherapist, Maggie Uden, she began her journey to compete in the 2012 Paralympics. She was awarded an MBE in 2016 for services to sport, including her work as a role model for amputee athletes, and she also mentors amputees at the Royal London. 'I diverted my anger towards the Government. I met families of those 52 people, they were offered £8,000 each. Bloody ridiculous. I remember meeting Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at the first memorial at St Paul's Cathedral. Tony Blair could not look me in the eye. I thought it's because he couldn't relate to us. But Gordon Brown and Sarah Brown were fantastic. 'I still don't understand why I wasn't really angry towards the bombers. [Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Hasib Hussain, 18, Germaine Lindsay, 19, and Tanweer, all died in the attack.] I couldn't get away from the fact they had left their family and left their babies, their children, their wives – they'd been influenced by someone else. [Martine herself has a son, now aged 15.] 'Not a day goes by when I don't think I'm lucky. You know, [Tanweer] was 4ft away from me. I should not be here. And I'm here not just because of me, I'm here because of the love and support I've had. 'Twenty years on, this is normal. This is my life. Maybe five, 10 years on it wasn't normal, but I'm very reflective now. I feel like I could not have done anything in my life to stop what happened, and that actually my life is more enriched, it's better, than it was before. My legs might be shorter, but that's it.' 'I knew it was bad, but I figured she had a chance': the rescuer's story Liz Kenworthy, an officer with the Met Police, was off duty on July 7 2005, heading into London for a conference. Having missed the first train from Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, so she could have a chat with her daughter, Emily, on the platform, Liz arrived at London Liverpool Street station later than planned and then headed to the Circle Line. 'I jumped on the Tube, with my rucksack on my back, my Daily Telegraph under my arm, because it was full of pictures of the excitement of the previous day, and the train pulled out, heading towards Aldgate,' she remembers. 'Very shortly afterwards, there was a sudden crunch; the train came to an abrupt halt.' The lights flickered on and off, and then there was a call on the intercom for anyone medically trained. Thinking that perhaps there had been a collision, Liz made her way through the carriages towards the front of the train. 'The next carriage was very different. There was darkness, there was newspaper blowing around. People injured and covered in dirt started coming towards me.' Reasoning that these were the walking wounded and that there were likely to be more seriously injured passengers further on, she carried on walking through the carriages. Finally, she reached the carriage where the bomb had detonated. 'The cables were coming out of the roof like spaghetti, the train had been disembowelled – the floor was ripped up, and there were bodies. I saw a human back underneath, down below my feet, and a big sheet of metal, which I had to stand on. The body down in the hole was [beyond saving], so I just had to ignore it.' Liz's police training had impressed on her that if there were more than three casualties, her job was to stand back, assess the situation and call for help. Liz sent a text to a colleague: 'Accident Aldgate, I'm OK', but the text didn't send, so Liz crawled into the carriage, finding Martine and Andrew. 'I saw a lady on the right with her feet up. I thought, 'Why is she sitting like that with her feet up on the seat?' Then I realised that it was her shoes up on the sill, not her feet. It was an incredibly confusing scene. 'I didn't compute what had happened initially. Then I realised she was badly hurt, but conscious. The man next to her had lost one of his legs, but he was conscious as well and then, to their left, there was a woman on her back in the debris trapped by her arm, and she was shouting and shouting. 'One of the rules we're taught is: the more people shout, the less help they probably need; if they've got the energy to shout, then let them get on with it. 'So I thought, 'I'll stick with the lady who's lost her feet, and I'll stick with the man, and the lady who's shouting. I'll deal with them.'' Liz worked to stem the bleeding from Andrew Brown's leg, and sent a volunteer with her warrant card to find T-shirts, belts and ties to use as tourniquets. She did her best to comfort and tend to the injured, and could see that Martine was in a critical condition. 'It was bad, but I knew that people from the First World War had their legs blown off in trenches and survived. Obviously, I couldn't tell if she had anything internal, but she was still talking and conscious. I figured she stood a chance.' Some time later, Liz was joined by Sgt Neal Kemp of the City of London Police. Sgt Kemp's arrival took the pressure off Liz, who was exhausted by this point. 'I had probably done about as much as I could. I was starting to flag. I said to Sgt Kemp: 'This is Andy, this is Martine. Remember their names. They're going to live. They're going to be alright, we're going to make sure they get out safely…'' Then approximately 45 minutes after the bombing, the fire brigade arrived. Liz made her way through the tunnel to the surface to see people being treated on the streets. Liz wrote down as much as she could remember while it was still fresh in her mind, and drew a map of the scene on the train. Later, her sergeant came with colleagues and took her statement. 'I gave them the original notes, and I said, 'I can't write anything else.' For a person who loves words, I've never, ever been able to write it down. I can talk to you about it. But I can't write it down.' Understandably, life didn't get back to 'normal' for Liz, as it didn't for so many survivors. 'Once I knew what [the blast] was, I was extremely angry – the idea that someone would do that to people they didn't know, and hurt people that were completely innocent, minding their own business, travelling on a train.' Liz saw someone in occupational health, and talking about it helped a great deal. 'I needed to talk about it and come to terms with not being able to do more, and wishing I could have stopped it. But, I did what I could in the circumstances, and I can't beat myself up over what I did or didn't do, because it's done.' For the remaining years of her service, Liz carried a first aid kit and torch in her backpack during her commute, 'in case it happened again'. She received and MBE for bravery and retired on the 11th anniversary of the attacks, in 2016. Unlike Martine, whom Liz is still in contact with, there is no forgiveness or understanding. There's a deep anger towards the terrorists, and Liz is incredibly blunt in her condemnation. 'They're beneath contempt. They're evil people. I don't care what their cause is. 'They've wasted their own lives. They've caused a lot of hurt and misery, and what have they achieved? Absolutely nothing. You want to blow yourself up. You really want to end up as a carcass in the bottom of a train? You're not a hero. You're just a dead lump of meat with me stepping on you. Me in my shoes, stepping on you. That's how I feel about that.'
The Sun
30-05-2025
- Health
- The Sun
I watched maniac hack his own neck with kitchen knife & took on infamous ‘suicide bomber'…my life as hostage negotiator
AS filing cabinets, chairs and shattered glass rained from the sky, John Sutherland felt like he was in a scene from the apocalypse. Hours earlier a man wearing a suicide vest and wielding a homemade flamethrower had stormed offices on London's Tottenham Court Road and taken terrified hostages, including a pregnant woman. 10 10 10 More than 1,000 workers, shoppers and tourists were evacuated as it was feared the 'terrorist' had enough explosives to 'bring the whole building down with everyone in it'. Dubbed 'the Siege of London', it was an exceptionally-high alert situation due to it being three months before the 2012 Summer Olympics. 'It was one of the most extraordinary days of my whole career,' former Met Police Chief Superintendent John, now 55, tells us. 'I was on the scene working out what on earth to do when I heard the sound of glass shattering. I looked up and a window was being broken. 'A series of office equipment - computers, furniture, cabinets, everything - rained down onto the street below. It was genuinely apocalyptic.' Fortunately, despite threatening to "blow everyone up", the suspect's bomb jacket was fake and the attacker wasn't a terrorist but a disgruntled HGV driver. Ex-BNP candidate Michael Green, then 48, carried out the siege to retrieve £1,000 he paid for a driving course after failing his exams twice and feeling he had 'nothing left to live for'. Green forced his hostages to lob office supplies through a window to 'liquidise some assets'. 'He raided their offices as way to settle his grievances after some form of meltdown,' John says. 'It could have ended terribly but we managed to get him and everyone out unscathed.' It's one of many colourful tales from the retired Met officer, who has mined his experiences over 26 years as a hostage and crisis negotiator to pen his Sunday Times bestselling crime thriller, The Castle. I'm a cop turned vigilante who hunted down a one-man crime wave after police turned a blind eye In an exclusive interview, John explains that unlike in Hollywood movies, 90 per cent of his work was 'holding out a hand' to those in crisis on 'the worst day of their lives'. He tackled dozens of threats in London and recalled the simple question he was routinely asked before being dispatched on a job: 'Are you ready to save a life?' 'Whether it was 3am or in the middle of the afternoon, when you heard those words it focused the mind, because it was the only thing that mattered,' John says. 'I've always said the greatest duty and privilege for any police officer is to save the life of another human being, and that is the exact job of a negotiator.' Stand-off tragedy Despite that, it was a deeply challenging and emotionally turbulent role which is voluntary within the police force. When on shift, negotiators are on-call 24 hours a day for that week. Most stand-offs go on for a few hours, but John said it was not unusual for them to last two to three days. One of the longest he was involved with was the tragic Markham Square siege in London's Chelsea on May 6, 2008. John was the negotiator for the five-hour stand-off which ended with wealthy divorce barrister Mark Saunders being shot dead by police. The 32-year-old, who had represented presenter Chris Tarrant, had fired shotgun rounds from his £2.2million home during a mental health episode linked to alcohol and drugs. 10 10 Out of respect for Mark's widow, John only says a few words about the tragedy, admitting: 'It was one of the days that will stay with me for the rest of my life.' Previously in his memoir, Blue, John mournfully explained how "a man died on my watch", and he was "the last living soul to hold a conversation with him". Another harrowing encounter saw John talk down an Eastern European man who was threatening to throw himself from the 17th floor of a block of flats in Islington overlooking Arsenal's Emirates stadium. 'He was standing on the wrong side of the window on a ledge that was six inches wide, if that,' John recalls. 'Inexplicably, the windows opened into space with no balconies. 'I don't know how long I was with him, all I know was that it was a hell of a long way down and any of the next moments could have been his last. 'It was difficult talking to him because I didn't speak his language, but as a negotiator you try to find common humanity and understand the story of the person you're dealing with. 'For him it was a perfect storm of being unable to get a job because he had no address, but not being able to have an address because he didn't have a job.' John admits he had no idea whether he would be able to coax the man back inside after he'd reached such a heartbreaking 'point of desperation', but thankfully he succeeded. Heartbroken OAP John tells us the key to a successful hostage negotiation is the art of listening, as was proven in an extraordinary case at an old people's home. Upon arriving, John was taken into a communal area where a man in his 80s sat in an armchair holding a large kitchen knife to his throat. 'There was almost a surreal nature to the scene, he clearly represented no threat to anyone else but a significant threat to himself,' John recalls. He approached him slowly and sat in an armchair nearby, knowing he could move much faster should he need to flee, and "asked the old boy tell his story'. It was difficult talking to him because I didn't speak his language, but as a negotiator you try to find common humanity and understand the story of the person you're dealing with John Sutherland 'It transgressed, later on in life, he'd fallen in love with a fellow resident of the home but his feelings were not reciprocated," John says. 'In fact she had been fairly unkind to him and he was an old boy with a broken heart. I listened to him and he agreed to put the knife down.' The need to be heard and 'feeling that they matter' were common themes, with John recounting many stories of people on the edge after mental health struggles. They include a man threatening to jump into an icy cold pond on Hampstead Heath at 3am and a drug addict holding a hypodermic syringe in his neck 'as a weapon'. Life in the balance 10 By the time John arrived at one difficult incident there was already a line of territorial support group (TSG) officers on the scene, clad with long shields. He recalls: 'The man in his 20s was in the kitchen-diner of a flat on one side, with a knife to his throat, and I was safely behind the shields trying to engage with him. 'This poor young guy was seriously mentally ill. It was one of few times in my career where I've spoken to someone directly and knew mine wasn't the only voice they were hearing.' John remembers him 'pacing continually backwards and forward, like a tiger I'd seen in London Zoo', twisting the knife more and more. If there's a life hanging in the balance, you can't wait for anyone else. You have to get on and deal with what is in front of you John Sutherland 'One minute he was with us, partly lucid, the next he was somewhere else,' he recalls. The man eventually surrendered after speaking to his mum on the phone. In another incident a man with a kitchen knife was furiously 'sawing backwards and forwards on his head and neck' while holding his ex-girlfriend and child hostage. John recalls the "curtain of blood running down his face and soaking his clothes", adding it reminded him of a scene from the Stephen King film Carrie. Race against time Whenever he received a dispatch call, John says there was an element of adrenaline, which was followed by exhaustion "so deep you're almost unable to speak or walk" afterwards. But he remained motivated by the 'profound sense that today we did something good'. He retired in February 2018, and John has now turned his hand to writing books including memoirs Blue and Crossing The Line, and fiction titles The Siege, The Fallen and his latest novel, The Castle. 'Psychologically and emotionally I draw on my lived experience," he says. "Alex, one of the lead characters [in The Castle], is a version of me, but is a million times more interesting. 'But my deeper purpose to all of it, which I feel very passionately about having worked as a hostage and crisis negotiator, is for people to re-learn the art of listening. 'In the world at the moment it seems that most of us are shouting at each other and not listening. Listening is in danger of becoming a lost art. 'While I hope my thrillers are thrilling, subtly they have something to say about the ways that we listen and how it can do some good in the world. It can save people's lives.'
The Independent
14-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
All the lottery prizes that could still be yours – and what happens to the millions that are never claimed
The search is on for two would-be millionaires who are sat on tickets for life-changing sums of money – but probably have no idea. A 180-day countdown starts for National Lottery winners from the day the numbers are drawn to claim their prize. But what happens to their millions of pounds if they don't? There are currently eight prizes waiting to be claimed with a total value of a staggering £7.2 million, with interest also clocking up. One player in Sevenoaks, Kent, has until 22 April to claim their jackpot of £10,000 per month for 30 years as part of the Set For Life prize - worth the equivalent of £3.6 million. Lottery workers even headed to Sevenoaks station early on Monday morning to urge commuters to check their tickets - but their searches were fruitless. The hunt also continues for one of two winners of a £3.8m prize from a Lotto draw on 1 March, after one person claimed their half of the jackpot on Thursday. There have been a number of close calls where people almost didn't claim their jackpot. Terry and Lynn Patience, from Barking, claimed £2.5 million when it was 'not far off the deadline' after their daughter heard about it on the radio in 2007. 'They just hadn't got round to it,' said Patrick Lisoire, consumer communications manager at National Lottery operator Allwyn. 'They didn't think they would have won anything, it completely slipped their mind.' The closest call came in 2015, when a claim was made for a £4.6 million prize in Barking and Dagenham with just three days until the deadline. There have also been a few huge sums that have never been claimed, the largest of which was from the EuroMillions draw on 8 June 2012. A ticket worth £63,837,543.60 had been bought by a player in the area of Stevenage and Hitchin and was never claimed. People with paper tickets are less likely to claim their wins than online players, according to Mr Lisoire. He said: 'It's retail tickets that may go unclaimed because you buy a paper ticket, if you misplace it, if you don't get around to checking it in time, although it is nearly 6 months, those tickets could expire.' Online players get reminded repeatedly to check their login via phone and email, so people are more likely to claim them. While one person or family may miss out on a life-changing jackpot, the unclaimed prize money doesn't go to waste. All the money - and any interest it's earned - goes to the National Lottery Good Causes fund after 180 days. Mr Lisoire said: 'If you break down the national lottery, there's only actually two reasons why it exists. To pay out life-changing prizes to winners, and to benefit the country as a whole.' The fund has helped finance capital projects such as the London 2012 Olympics, the Eden Project and the Angel of the North. It's also funded smaller community projects across the country, such as setting up city farms and helping fund Wales' very first gay pride march. The National Lottery have given out 685,000 individual grants have to support community and national projects, as players raise over £30 million a week for the fund with ticket sales alone. What lottery prizes currently remain unclaimed? £1,000,000.00 EuroMillions prize, drawn on 18 October, bought in the City and County of Swansea. Winning numbers are: JDDF3809516. Deadline to claim is 16 April. £10,000 every month for 30 years Set For Life prize, drawn on 24 October, bought in Sevenoaks District. Winning numbers are: 2, 11, 29, 37, 45 Life Ball 6. Deadline is 22 April. £321,840.60 EuroMillions prize, drawn on 19 November, bought in Winchester. Winning numbers are: 4, 13, 20, 28, 49 Lucky Stars 7, 12. Deadline is 18 May. £1,000,000.00 EuroMillions prize, drawn on 27 December, bought in Wiltshire. Winning numbers are: XDQM36414. Deadline is 25 June. £137,981.30 EuroMillions prize, drawn on 31 December, bought in Huntingdonshire District. Winning numbers are: 9, 24, 26, 28, 33 Lucky Stars 8, 12. Deadline is 29 June. £106,738.50 EuroMillions prize, drawn on 7 February, bought in London Borough of Barnet. Winning numbers are: 10, 23, 24, 29, 45 Lucky Stars 8, 10. Deadline is 6 August. £1,000,000.00 EuroMillions prize, drawn on 14 February, bought in Liverpool. Winning numbers are: 4, 14, 31, 36, 38 Lucky Stars 3, 10. Deadline is 13 August. £10,000 every month for 1 year Set For Life prize, drawn on 20 February, bought in the Vale of Glamorgan. Winning Numbers are: 5, 8, 21, 26, 37 Life Ball 1. Deadline is 19 August.
