re: Hillsborough-Coppers fault

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“In the ambulance, I was sucking the vomit from Vicky’s throat. I couldn’t get rid of that taste for six months.

“A psychiatrist said I was either trying to hang on to the last contact with my daughters or it was guilt – I was punishing myself for not saving them.

“The hurt I suffered that day was so extreme I can’t be hurt any more.”

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Tony Edwards, the only professional ambulanceman to reach the Leppings Lane end, recalled what happened outside the ground. He said: " A policeman came to my window and said, ' You can't go on the pitch, they 're still fighting'."

He went on nonetheless, but his job was made impossible by the scale of the casualties.

The memory of bodies being piled on to his ambulance, of people pleading with him to take their friends and loved ones, of the anarchy that made his job impossible, haunts him to this day.

But what haunts him most is the knowledge that he was the only paramedic trying to help. He said: "There were 42 ambulances, including mine, waiting outside the stadium. That means 80- odd trained staff could have been inside the ground. They weren't allowed in because they were told there was fighting.

"But there was no fighting. The survivors were deciding who was the priority, who we should deal with. The police weren't. We weren't . Can you imagine a rail accident where all the ambulances wait on the embankment while survivors bring the casualties up?"

Of the 94 who died that day ( 14-year-old Lee Nicol died four days later and 18-year-old Tony Bland had his life support machine turned off in March 1993) only 14 made it to hospital.

Trevor Hicks was one of the few who got a loved one into Tony Edwards' ambulance. He was trying to resuscitate his 19- year- old daughter Sarah when he spotted her 15- year- old sister Victoria being placed into the ambulance.

Trevor tried to push Sarah in alongside her but the bodies were piled high and he had to lay her back on the pitch.

He said: " The ambulance started to move away. I saw the door close and I had to make a decision in that split-second. I thought 'the fella with Sarah knows what he's doing, I'll leave her with him and another ambulance will be along in a minute'."

Another one never came and both of his girls died. Trevor, now 63, added: "In the ambulance, I was sucking the vomit from Vicky's throat. I couldn't get rid of that taste for six months.

"A psychiatrist said I was either trying to hang on to the last contact with my daughters or it was guilt - I was punishing myself for not saving them.

"The hurt I suffered that day was so extreme I can't be hurt any more."

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only two years after Heysel

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In that football tragedy, Liverpool fans were almost entirely to blame,

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Not wanting to inquire into the stadium's faulty structure or the emergency response teams, it became much easier to lay blame on the already demonized working class football fans.

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Were the police just letting everyone in like that or did the fans more or less overtake any police or gate personnel on staff?

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