On April 15 1989, 24,000 Liverpool fans traveled to a football match. 96 never returned. Over 20 years after Britain’s worst sporting disaster, we want the world to see the faces of the fans whose hopes and dreams for the future ended that day. Collectively they’ve become known as ‘The 96’ but to the families and friends they left behind, they were simply a dad, a son, a brother and a
sister; a cousin, an auntie, an uncle and a granddad; a boyfriend, a husband, a soul mate and a best friend. This is the account of what happened on that fateful day.
As a result of the stadium layout and segregation policy, turnstiles that would normally have been used to enter the North Stand from the east were off-limits and all Liverpool supporters had to converge on a single entrance at Leppings Lane. Kick-off was scheduled for 3:00 pm and fans were advised to take up positions fifteen minutes beforehand. Between 2:30 pm and 2:40 pm, there was a build-up of supporters eager to enter the stadium before the game commenced in the area outside the turnstiles facing Leppings Lane.
A bottleneck developed with more fans arriving than could be safely filtered through the turnstiles before 3:00 pm. People presenting tickets at the wrong turnstiles and those who had been refused entry could not leave because of the crowd behind them but remained as an obstruction. Fans outside could hear cheering as the teams came on the pitch ten minutes before the match started and as the match kicked off, but could not gain entry. A police constable radioed control requesting the game be delayed, as it had been 2 years before, to ensure the
safe passage of supporters into the ground. The request was received but declined.
By about 14:50, pens 3 and 4 - those directly behind the goal - were full, but outside the ground thousands of fans were still waiting to get in. The pens’ official combined capacity was 2,200. It was later discovered this should have been reduced to 1,600 as crush barriers installed three years earlier did not meet official safety standards. With an estimated 5,000 fans trying to enter through the turnstiles and increasing safety concerns, the police, to avoid fatalities outside the ground, opened a large exit gate (Gate
C) that ordinarily permitted the free flow of supporters departing the stadium. Two further gates were opened to relieve pressure. After an initial rush thousands of supporters entered the stadium “steadily at a fast walk�.
When the gates were opened, thousands of fans entered a narrow tunnel leading to the rear of the terrace into two overcrowded central pens, creating pressure at the front. Hundreds of people were pressed against one another and the fencing by the weight of the crowd behind them. People entering were unaware of the problems at the fence; police or stewards usually stood at the entrance to the tunnel and when the central pens reached capacity directed fans to the side pens, but on this occasion, for reasons not fully explained, did not. A BBC TV news report
conjectured that if police had positioned two police horses correctly, they would have acted as breakwaters directing many fans into side pens, but on this occasion, it was not done.
For some time, problems at the front of the pen went unnoticed, except by those affected, as attention was absorbed by the match. At 3:06 pm the referee, Ray Lewis, on the advice of the police, stopped the match after fans climbed the fence in an effort to escape the crush and went onto the track. By this time, a small gate in the fence had been forced open and some fans escaped via this route, as others continued to climb over the fencing. The police attempted to stop fans from spilling onto the pitch. Other fans were pulled to safety by fans in the West
Stand above the Leppings Lane terrace. The intensity of the crush broke the crush barriers on the terraces. Holes in the perimeter fencing were made by fans desperately attempting to rescue others. Liverpool fans desperately try to climb the fence onto the safety of the pitch while being stopped by the police. Those trapped were packed so tightly in the pens that many victims died of compressive asphyxia while standing. The crowd in the Leppings Lane Stand overspilled onto the pitch where many injured and
traumatized fans who had climbed to safety congregated. Police, stewards and members of the St. John Ambulance service were overwhelmed. Many uninjured fans assisted the injured; several attempted CPR and others tore down advertising hoardings to use as stretchers.
As events unfolded, some police officers were still deployed making a cordon three-quarters of the way down the pitch to prevent Liverpool supporters reaching the opposing supporters. Some fans tried to break through the cordon to ferry injured fans to waiting ambulances but were forcibly turned back. A total of 44 ambulances arrived but police prevented all but one from entering the stadium. Only 14 of the 96 fatalities arrived at hospital.
A total of 94 people, aged from 10 to 67 years old, died, either at the stadium, in the ambulances, or at hospital shortly after arrival, and 766 fans were injured, and around 300 hospitalised. On 19 April, the death toll reached 95 when 14-year-old Lee Nicol – attached to a life support machine – succumbed to his injuries. The death toll reached 96 in March 1993, when artificial feeding and hydration was withdrawn from 22-year-old Tony Bland after nearly four years, during which time he had been
in a persistent vegetative state and shown no sign of improvement.
Andrew Devine, aged 22 at the time of the disaster, suffered similar injuries to Tony Bland and was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state, but in March 1997 – a month before the eighth anniversary of the disaster – it was reported he had emerged from the condition and was able to communicate using a touch-sensitive pad. Of the fatalities, 79 were aged 30 or younger, two were sisters, there were three pairs of brothers and a father and son were among them,
as were two men about to become fathers for the first time; 25-year-old Steven Brown of Wrexham and 30-year-old Peter Thompson of Widnes. Jon-Paul Gilhooley aged 10, cousin of Liverpool F.C. captain Steven Gerrard, was the youngest person to die. Gerrard said the disaster inspired him to lead the team he supported as a boy and become a top professional.
After the disaster at Hillsborough, there was an inquriy which led to the Taylor Report. This report claimed that is was the Liverpool fans fault the disaster happened, and abolished any idea that the police were to blame. This has led to many years of fighting by the families of the 96 fans that died at Hillsborough and recently a new report came out from an independent panel who re examined 400,000 documents relating to Hillsborough. Here’s how the BBC summed up the report: “It is evident… that the safety of the crowd admitted to the terrace was compromised at every level: access to the
turnstiles from the public highway; the condition and adequacy of the turnstiles; the management of the crowd by South Yorkshire Police (SYP) and the Sheffield Wednesday F.C (SWFC) stewards; alterations to the terrace, particularly the construction of pens; the condition and placement of crush barriers; access to the central pens via a tunnel descending at a 1 in 6 gradient; emergency egress from the pens via small gates in the perimeter fence; and lack of precise monitoring of crowd capacity within the pens. “These deficiencies were well known and further overcrowding problems at the turnstiles in 1987 and on the terrace in 1988 were additional indications of the
inherent dangers to crowd safety. The risks were known and the crush in 1989 was foreseeable.” “The flaws in responding to the emerging crisis on the day were rooted in institutional tension within and between organisations. “This was reflected in: a policing and stewarding mindset predominantly concerned with crowd disorder; the failure to realise the consequences of opening exit gates to relieve congestion at the turnstiles; the failure to manage the crowd’s entry and allocation between the pens; the failure to anticipate the consequences within the central pens of not sealing the tunnel; the delay in realising that the crisis in the central
pens was a consequence of overcrowding rather than crowd disorder. “The SYP decision to replace the experienced match commander… just weeks before an FA Cup semi-final, has been previously criticised. None of the documents disclosed to the panel indicated the rationale behind this decision.” “Throughout the 1980s there was considerable ambiguity about South Yorkshire Police’s and Sheffield Wednesday FC’s crowd management responsibilities within the stadium. The management of the crowd was viewed exclusively through a lens of potential crowd disorder, and this ambiguity was not resolved despite problems at
previous semi-finals. SWFC and SYP were unprepared for the disaster that unfolded on the terraces on 15 April 1989.” “It is evident from the disclosed documents that from the outset SYP sought to establish a case emphasising exceptional levels of drunkenness and aggression among Liverpool fans, alleging that many arrived at the stadium late, without tickets and determined to force entry. “Eight years after the disaster it was revealed publicly for the first time that statements made by SYP officers were initially handwritten as ‘recollections’, then subjected to a process of ‘review and alteration’ involving SYP solicitors and a team of SYP
officers. “Some 116 of the 164 statements identified for substantive amendment were amended to remove or alter comments unfavorable to SYP.”
A schoolboy holds a leather ball in a photograph on a bedroom wall the bed is made, the curtains drawn as silence greets the break of dawn. The dusk gives way to morning light revealing shades of red and white , which hang from posters locked in time of the Liverpool team of 89. Upon a pale white quilted sheet a football kit is folded neat with a yellow scarf, trimmed with red and some football boots beside the bed. In hope, the room awakes each day to see the boy who used to play but once again it wakes alone for this young boy’s not coming home. Outside, the springtime fills the air the smell of life is everywhere viola’s bloom and tulips grow while daffodils dance heel to toe. These should have been such special times for a boy who’d now be in his
prime but spring forever turned to grey in the Yorkshire sun, one April day. The clock was locked on 3.06 as sun shone down upon the pitch lighting up faces etched in pain as death descended on Leppings Lane. Between the bars an arm is raised amidst a human tidal wave a young hand yearning to be saved grows weak inside this deathly cage. A boy not barely in his teens is lost amongst the dying screams a body too frail to fight for breath is drowned below a sea of death His outstretched arm then disappears to signal thirteen years of tears as 96 souls of those who fell await the toll of the justice bell. Ever since that disastrous day a vision often comes my way I reach and grab his outstretched arm then pull him up away from harm.
We both embrace with tearfilled eyes I then awake to realise it’s the same old dream I have each week as I quietly cry myself to sleep. On April the 15th every year when all is calm and skies are clear beneath a glowing Yorkshire moon a lone scots piper plays a tune. The tune rings out the justice cause then blows due west across the moors it passes by the eternal flame then engulfs a young boys picture frame. His room is as it was that day for thirteen years it’s stayed that way untouched and frozen forever in time since that tragic day in 89. And as it plays its haunting sound tears are heard from miles around they’re tears from families of those who fell awaiting the toll of the justice bell.