Manchester bombing: Youngest victim ‘could have been saved’ with better first aid, report finds

‘How do we carry on living with this information?’ asks eight-year-old’s father

Saffie-Rose Roussos, the youngest victim of the Manchester Arena bombing (PA)

An eight-year-old girl whose parents were told she died instantly in the Manchester Arena terror attack was alive for up to an hour and could have survived the atrocity had she been given better first aid, a report says.

Saffie Roussos – the youngest of 22 victims killed when Salman Abedi detonated a bomb after an Ariana Grande concert in 2017 – died from losing blood from her legs, but no tourniquets or splints were applied to reduce the bleeding.

A report commissioned by lawyers for her family found she lived for more than an hour after the blast and that opportunities to help her were missed, the BBC reported.

Saffie, from Leyland, Lancashire, who was just 4 metres from the explosion, was knocked unconscious.

She was the first person to be carried out of the foyer, but there was no ambulance waiting outside the arena and one had to be flagged down, the report found.

As the eight-year-old was being taken to hospital she asked a paramedic: “Am I going to die?”

Saffie had attended the concert with her mother, Lisa Roussos, and sister, Ashlee Bromwich.

The public inquiry into the bombing, which started in September and resumed on Monday following a Christmas break, previously heard that Saffie’s injuries were probably not survivable, and her family had been told that she died instantly.

Her father, Andrew Roussos, told the BBC:  “She could have been saved.

“How do we carry on living with this information? How can we carry on breathing with this information?

“I can't look at Saffie’s picture. Since I've read this report, I can't look at her.”

Sir John Saunders, who is chairing the hearing, is due to issue a number of reports later in the year, including on the security arrangements at the arena, the emergency response to the attack and the experience of each of those who died, as well as on radicalisation and preventability.