July 7: commuters boarded bombed train to help victims

A commuter who was in the tube carriage blown up at Edgware Road on July 7 2005 broke down today as he described the aftermath of the explosion.

Matthew Childs was sitting at the front of the second carriage of the Circle Line train, in which Mohammed Sidique Khan detonated his bomb. He had missed his intended stop because he was reading a newspaper.

Giving evidence at the inquests into the deaths of the 52 people killed that day, Mr Childs said everything went white.

“The force was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. And it seemed to come from above to me, the force… I assumed that the roof of the tunnel had come in and had just hit me,” he said.

Mr Childs, who had received serious leg injuries in the blast and was unable to move, told the hearing he had seen a woman on the floor close to him. He said, “I know that she was lying down on her front.”

Mr Childs became emotional as he described how much of the woman’s clothing had been blown off.

He said she was very still. The woman, 29-year-old Laura Webb, was one of six people killed at Edgware Road.

A number of people eventually came to help her, he said. “One man I remember was trying to check her pulse and resuscitate her.”

The inquests heard that the man is believed to have been Steve Hucklesby, a passenger who managed to get onto the bombed train from an eastbound train which had stopped alongside it. After attempting to resuscitate Miss Webb, Mr Hucklesby then treated other passengers including Mr Childs.

“He was just trying to keep talking to me,” Mr Childs told the hearing. “I was obviously losing a lot of blood and feeling quite drowsy and things, you know, started to fade a bit more, so he just kept talking to me, reassuring me.”

He added: “It wasn’t just myself. He was trying to get around as many people as possible. The train that had stopped alongside us, people were trying to break the windows which I couldn’t understand at first, and I eventually realised that what they were trying to do was trying to get off the train and on the carriage to help people which I’m just amazed at now.”

Mr Hucklesby would later be awarded an MBE for his efforts. He is due to give evidence to the inquests, at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, later today.

The six people murdered at Edgware Road were: Michael ‘Stan’ Brewster, 52, from Derby; Jonathan Downey, 34, from Milton Keynes; David Foulkes, 22, from Oldham, Greater Manchester; Colin Morley, 52, from Finchley, north London; Jennifer Nicholson, 24, from Reading, Berkshire and Laura Webb, 29, from Islington, north London.

The London bombings inquest is now in its fifth week. It is expected to last up to five months.