The evidence given to the 2014-16 inquests into the deaths of 96 people at Hillsborough by the police officer in command that day has been read to his trial for manslaughter, including his admission that he “wasn’t the best man for the job”.
David Duckenfield had been promoted to chief superintendent and match commander on 27 March 1989, 19 days before the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, despite not having policed a match at Hillsborough since 1979, the jury heard.
Questioned by Christina Lambert QC, counsel to the inquests, Duckenfield acknowledged that before he took command of the 1989 match he did not know of the changes made to Hillsborough over that decade, including the division of the Leppings Lane terrace by metal fences into “pens”.
He acknowledged during the inquest hearings that he did not visit Hillsborough before he signed off the police’s plan for the match, known as an operational order, on 29 March. Although he subsequently went to two Sheffield Wednesday matches in early April, he acknowledged that he had only a “very general” knowledge of the ground’s layout. He was unaware that the approach to the Leppings Lane turnstiles was a bottleneck, he said, and acknowledged it was a failure not to appreciate the potential for congestion at the turnstiles.
Duckenfield accepted it would have been “sensible” to have strategies to avoid congestion – the jury has heard that 23 turnstiles were allocated for all 24,000 people with tickets to support Liverpool, and seven of those turnstiles, A to G, were for all 10,100 people with standing tickets.
Duckenfield told the inquests that he had not given “any thought one way or another” to the need to “filter” people on the approach to the turnstiles, to reduce the risk of congestion.
He did not know, he acknowledged, that the turnstiles A to G opened on to an inner concourse which had a large tunnel facing people, leading to the Leppings Lane terrace “pens”.
Lambert asked him at the inquests about the risks potentially posed to people’s safety by the division of the Leppings Lane terrace into pens: “Mr Duckenfield, did you recognise the risk of overcrowding that was created by the existence of the pens on the Leppings Lane terrace?”
“No ma’am,” he responded.
The jury has been told that at 2.52pm Duckenfield ordered a large exit gate, C, to be opened to alleviate the congestion at the turnstiles, that approximately 2,000 people were allowed in through it, and that many went down the tunnel facing them, into the central pens, where the lethal crush took place.
Asked about his appointment, given his inexperience, Duckenfield told the inquest that he had been told he could rely on an experienced and efficient team of officers. As match commander, he understood that his decision-making would only be required for “extraordinary and non-routine matters” and if something went wrong. Asked at the inquest by Lambert if he had concerns that there was limited time to become “au fait with what the job of match commander involved,” Duckenfield replied: “I’m older, hopefully wiser [now]: probably I wasn’t the best man for the job on the day.”
Earlier on Wednesday, the manslaughter trial was told the names and ages of all 96 people who were killed in the crush on the terrace’s central pens, and the principal medical cause of death, which was compression asphyxia in all but one. The names were mostly read in order of age, from the youngest, Jon-Paul Gilhooley, 10, then the 37 who were teenagers, to the oldest person to die, Gerard Baron, 67.
After the reading of names, the judge, Sir Peter Openshaw, gave a direction to the jury: “Obviously we all recognise that the deaths of 96 spectators, many of whom were children and young people, is a profound, human tragedy and any subsequent trial is inevitably dramatic and indeed, from time to time, distressing. But when I come to sum up the case to you, I will tell you to put aside your sympathies and emotions.”
Duckenfield, 74, denies gross negligence manslaughter in relation to 95 of the people who were killed. Graham Mackrell, 69, the former Sheffield Wednesday secretary and safety officer, has pleaded not guilty to two breaches of safety legislation. Openshaw directed the jury that neither the film footage nor the deaths of the 96 people, nor the events of the day itself, were relevant to the case against Mackrell.
The trial continues.
