Hillsborough disaster: Witnesses give their accounts of the events that led to a tragedy

Twenty-seven years ago, the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, turned into carnage. At the Leppings Lane end, in the already packed central ‘pens’, 96 Liverpool supporters died after the police opened an exit gate on them to relieve crowd pressure outside the ground. Now the inquest has judged them unlawful killings, the witnesses can give their accounts of the events leading to this tragedy

St George’s Hall in Liverpool became a focus for remembrance following the verdict last month (Reuters)

Peter Carney recalls walking towards the Leppings Lane end: “What was noticeable from the year before [when the FA Cup semi was also played at Hillsborough] is that we’d had to walk through barriers. You’d show your ticket to go through one barrier and then further down the street you’d show your ticket again to be allowed through the next barrier. There were no barriers in ’89 and we noticed that. Anyway we got something to eat in the corner shop, a Mars bar and a pint of milk I think, and we got into the ground at about twenty to three or a quarter to three … it was obviously packed.”

Liverpool supporter John Joynt remembers arriving later than he had planned in Sheffield because of the traffic: “The police had the ground well boxed off the year before, but we didn’t think too much of it at the time. The turnstiles didn’t seem to be letting people through very quickly, and the crowd was really building up. The crush wasn’t as bad as it was to be inside, but the police had lost control of it, basically. When we got towards the turnstiles, the crowd was building up outside. We made our way into the little pen in front of the turnstiles and probably got through at about 2.45 p.m.”

Inside the ground, Danny Rhodes, a Nottingham Forest supporter at the Kop end, picks up the story: ‘As time ticked on towards 2.30pm, the Forest end started filling up. And we noticed very early that something was wrong with the Leppings Lane end. From where I was, you could see the individual people in each of the wing pens, but the central pens were far, far busier and just one big mass of heads. One lad near me joked that Liverpool hadn’t sold all their tickets. The difference between the density of the wing pens and central pens was stark, and seemed more pronounced as kick-off drew closer. I’ve often wondered who else might have noticed. Surely the authorities did? It didn’t take a trained eye.”

At the other end of the ground, Mick Bowers was starting to get concerned about the pressure of the crowd behind the goal: ‘From 2pm, I noticed myself getting pushed further down the terrace and over to the left. At the time I was not concerned, as I was used to standing behind the goal and it is part of why I loved to go the game: the atmosphere, the hustle and bustle. However, I was finding that when I was pushed forward there was no going back. This started to alarm me, as normally if you go forward then you can jostle back to your position. By 2.30pm, I was becoming concerned. The pressure was now so great that I had my arm in front of me at head height so that it was more comfortable and I could hold myself off the person in front of me. My shoelace was undone, but I couldn’t bend down to tie it. There was no way I could get out of Pen 4 – it was impossible – and I was now very anxious. The pressure just kept building. I was concerned for my safety. There was a barrier to my left, so I tried traversing across, thinking that if I get behind that then I can’t go further forward as it would offer protection.”

Meanwhile, outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles at around 2.30pm, the crowd had swelled considerably and the turnstiles were too few, malfunctioning, and could not admit fans fast enough. The crowd was building up, when Paul Jarvill joined it: “There was no queuing system. It’s an open concourse outside the turnstiles, and everyone was allowed onto it. At this stage, you’ve got the thought in the back of your mind that there’s too many out here. Trying to get towards the turnstiles was like swimming in mud. You were totally sucked into it, and you had to move forwards, you couldn’t go back because of the people behind you. I looked over my shoulder and there was just a sea of people, and you could see people’s eyes getting wider. There was a fear starting to build.

There was a mounted officer with a bullhorn shouting, 'Get back, step back', but you couldn’t. Eventually, [my friend] and I were side by side, and we got towards the turnstile and there was a police officer on a horse. We couldn’t go back, we couldn’t move sideways, so we had to take the decision to crawl under. At that time I was scared and starting to panic. I got under the horse and went through the turnstile. Immediately inside, there was a police officer guarding a programme seller. I said that he needed to be outside sorting that lot out, or else somebody was going to get hurt. He just laughed and said, “Well, in that case I'm better off in here.”

At around this time, Richie Greaves and his friends also arrived at the Leppings Lane end: “Outside the turnstiles it was absolutely chocka. There were police on horses; the horses were trying to move about. There was a Liverpool copper on horseback and one minute he was joking that he’d arrived late because it had taken him that long to ride from Liverpool and the next minute he was shouting at everyone. The crowd was shouting at him to get a grip of the situation.”

Inside, the central pens were already becoming too full. People were struggling to keep their footing, and being squashed tightly against each other. Eileen McBride, an off-duty nurse, was in the West Stand, looking down on the central pens, and remembers sensing that something wasn’t right: “The side pens were virtually empty. Even this early, people looked tense, and as time got closer to kick-off it was getting more and more tense. I kept saying to my partner that something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. Normally when you are in a big crowd like in the Kop, you get a surge forward when there is a goal or a corner or whatever, and then the crowd slowly moves back as the action passes. But it wasn’t like that– you could see the crowd moving forward, but you couldn’t see anyone moving back again.”

The constant flow of people coming down the long, dark tunnel behind was immediately filling any space that a forward motion created, and leaving the crowd that bit more compressed. Outside, Nick Braley decided it was getting to be too much: ‘I say to the lads that I don’t care if I miss the kick-off, don’t care if I miss the match, this is dangerous and I want out. I head off to the side, but then someone shouts that the gate is open and I find myself looking at an open gate, a couple of coppers and a few fans jumping through. I go for it but as I arrive the copper is trying to pull it shut. I stuck my foot on the bottom and jump through, the last one in as the copper pulls it shut behind me. Half expecting to get nicked, I go to show my ticket but the copper isn’t bothered. I’m in, but what the hell is going on outside?”

Brian Johnson was by this time safely inside the ground in the far right of the West Stand seated section above the Leppings Lane terraces: “About 2.40ish, I decided to go to the toilets. It was an antiquated place, and while having a pee I noticed that, instead of windows, they had left alternate bricks out on a couple of courses on the outer walls, probably for ventilation. Being a nosy sod I went to have a look outside. I couldn’t believe what I saw. There were a couple of police on horseback, but they were just stuck within this mass of people, and they had no control of the situation. People were climbing up walls, gates, anything to get out of the crush. When I got back to my seat, I said to my dad, ‘There is no way that lot are getting in before kick-off; you wanna see it out there’!”

The crowd in the cramped courtyard outside the turnstiles had become compacted, as the number of fans arriving at the back outnumbered the number that the turnstiles could admit. The crowd only grew denser as they got closer. Once there, Steve Hart remembers, I was shouting at the turnstile operator that it was chaos outside and he needed to do something, and he didn’t even take my ticket … he was just clicking people through. I was screaming then at the police inside the ground that it was carnage outside and if they didn’t do something it was going to be bad. They weren’t interested, and just told us to get in the ground.”

John Joynt got through a turnstile around 2.45pm. Once inside, he remembers seeing only one way to go: “There was nobody inside the compound between the turnstiles and the tunnel directing people where to go. Everyone just headed for the tunnel. There were no signs telling you anything different. We went down the tunnel into Pen 3 and stood at the back, where we were hoping to stay.”

Val Yates had been one of the very first people into the stadium, such was her excitement, but by 2.30pm, the central pens were rammed and getting worse: “Some lads I know joined me and we noticed that the Forest end was starting to fill. One lad actually said that it was rammed in our end but they had so much room they could have a party. We were singing, ‘We’ve got more fans than you Nottingham,’ and knocking a beach ball around. Everything was good-humoured, but I was already getting jostled about as people were singing and dancing. “Jocky is back, Jocky is back, woa woa” and “Brucie, Brucie Grobbelaar, Brucie Grobbelaar in our goal”. All I thought to myself was to try and keep my spot because I still wanted to get a good view and am only about armpit level to everyone else! The sways and surges were getting more and more violent, and I was just thinking that I was going to get shoved about for 90 minutes. I was starting to get a little concerned, but the surges always went back a second or two later.”

Inside the central pens, Damian Kavanagh recalls the crowd getting tighter and tighter: “The nature of crush barriers is to stop the pressure of having one big crowd all leaning on each other from the back of the terrace to the front. It was very much my practice to try and stand in front of a barrier, with my back on it. As a crowd gets busier and busier, though, people are coming in all around you and you’re slowly but surely getting moved forward, so you’d be a bit further down with another crush barrier in front of you. And that is uncomfortable, with the weight of people behind you and an iron bar in your chest. So we moved down further still to try and get a barrier behind us again…”

Nick Braley moved to the side as gate C opened briefly and he took advantage of the opportunity: “It was dangerous out there, really dangerous. Fans are getting agitated. ‘Open the fucking gates, people are going to die outside,’ is heard by a number of people and the coppers are standing taking it, looking scared and out of their depth. I decide to hang on and wait for my mates and am stood for a couple of minutes until the call to open the gate is made – thank God for that. As the gate is opened I dodge the first few fans coming in as I try to wait around, but the numbers coming in becomes a flood and I am swept away, up the tunnel onto the entrance to the terraces.”

After being crushed against the wall outside the ground for what felt like an eternity, Steve Hart fell through a turnstile, with his ticket still intact, and was struggling to get his breath back in the concourse area between the turnstiles, exit gate C and the tunnel: ‘By the time I got into the ground I had lost my mates. I was in agony, I could hardly breathe, and I was gasping for air.”

The situation outside was now dangerous, and clearly wasn’t going to be resolved without urgent action. It was at this point that Match Commander Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield – who was watching the crowd on CCTV from his position in the police control box overlooking the Leppings Lane terraces – gave the order to open the gates. And while waiting in the concourse area, recovering from his ordeal, Steve saw the order being executed: ‘I saw a policeman with a couple of stewards, and they had keys. The policeman had a flat cap, so he was obviously not an everyday bobby. They walked over to the gate and I could see they were opening it. At that point I thought there was no point hanging around any longer, so I went down the tunnel.”

Peter Dalling remembers walking through the gate into the tightly packed tunnel: “The coppers just said, ‘Go in there’ so we walked through and down the tunnel. That was my first ever visit to Hillsborough and I thought if everyone is headed for the tunnel then that must be the right way. It was a squeeze, but we made it down, probably more by luck than judgement. There were a number of people seriously hurt in the tunnel, but I think we must have missed that. There were no exits left and right, so you could only go forwards. We got into the pens and the crowd had stopped moving by then. I said to my friends, ‘We can’t stay in here, we’ve got to get out.’ We went left at the end of the tunnel into Pen 4. I looked around and there were people being dragged up into the stands behind us and I said to the lads, ‘Let’s try and get back towards the wall, because at least if there was a wall behind us we’re not going to get hurt’.”

Grant Walker also recalls the moment that the gate opened: “Everyone was worried that we were going to miss the kick-off. Next minute there’s a cheer, and the exit gate opened up, so we all filed through. Once you got into that dark tunnel … horrendous … the nightmares I’ve had over it since...’

Opening the gates was a decision not taken lightly. The very name, ‘exit’ gate, tells you they were not designed to allow fans to enter. However, despite taking this drastic measure, effective management of the crowd could still have averted disaster. Bearing in mind that the tunnel leading to the central pens was directly in front of exit gate C, the simple act of blocking access to the tunnel and directing fans to the side pens would have stopped thousands more supporters using the only obvious entrance to enter the already packed pens. There was another problem with the tunnel, though, in that it was dark inside; and it initially sloped slightly upwards in the dimming light of the entrance before falling away downwards into the dark and a one-in-six gradient. That caused many people to lose their footing, as Peter Carney recalls:

“As we walked in, we heard the roar of the crowd as the teams came out. And we strained our necks upwards, we could see a little bit of the pitch, with only a small gap that you could actually see down. The next thing we knew we went tumbling forward. As I went down the slope, I went into the terraces in one movement and by the time I got myself together, I realised that I was looking back at the way I had come in.”

Dr Glyn Phillips realised straight away that the central pens were abnormally full: “I knew this was not a good place to be and we decided to move higher up the terrace. By then, people couldn’t stand aside, so we went down on hands and knees and crawled through legs. Higher up, it was still so tight that standing up was difficult but we did it. Then we were looking at each other with faces of incredulity. What’s going on? There wasn’t much you could do, though, because you were stuck, penned in by the side against railings. Imagine having your elbows down by your side and your hands up in front of your chest. You just couldn’t move your arms because you were so crammed together.”

What followed was hell on earth for those trapped in the central pens. On a bright sunny day in Sheffield, an exit gate had increased the density of the crowd considerably and, with no direction and no attempt to seal access, the lives of thousands were about to change forever….

This is an edited extract from ‘The Hillsborough Disaster: In Their Own Words’ by Mike Nicholson (Amberley Publishing, £12.99)