The mother of two teenage daughters who were killed at Hillsborough in 1989 was told in a Sheffield hospital she could not see the body of one of them because it was “the property of the coroner of South Yorkshire”, and nothing to do with her.
Jenni Hicks, giving controlled but deeply emotional evidence at the new inquests into the disaster in Warrington, said that when eventually she did see and hug both girls, she found Vicki cold, but Sarah felt “warm as toast”.
Jenni said she has always regretted not insisting Sarah be checked again, to see if she was definitely dead, although she had been pronounced dead by doctors.
Two off-duty police officers, an off-duty ambulance officer, and a doctor, Colin Flenley, who was at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest as a Liverpool fan, had described their frantic efforts, with Trevor Hicks, to save Sarah in the “horrendous” situation on the Hillsborough pitch.
The ambulance officer, Andrew Lawson, who was working in a restaurant at Hillsborough that day, went on to the pitch when he saw people emerging from the central pens of the Leppings Lane terrace in distress.
In his 1989 statement Lawson described Trevor Hicks, who had come down on to the pitch, as desperately upset, screaming and shouting for help to save his girls, and that he cried to Lawson: “Help me. They’re all I’ve got. Help them.”
Hicks gave evidence on Tuesday when the inquests heard about Vicki’s death. He recalled the “awful choice” he had to make, to go with Vicki in an ambulance and leave Sarah on the pitch, because he expected that another ambulance would soon arrive to take her to hospital.
In fact, the jury heard, that did not happen. Russell Greaves, a police detective constable based in Lincoln, who was at the match as a supporter with his friend and fellow police officer Fred Maddox, told the inquests that they planned to put Sarah on the ambulance with Vicki, but it was full with two other casualties, then no other ambulance arrived.
He had heard there were ambulances at the far end of the Hillsborough ground near the gymnasium, so they carried her up the pitch on an advertising hoarding being used as a makeshift stretcher.
However, there were no ambulances at the gymnasium, which was by then being used as a temporary mortuary, so they put Sarah down and continued mouth to mouth resuscitation and chest compressions to try and revive her. They were eventually approached by medical staff, one of whom told Greaves that Sarah was dead.
Greaves, a large man with a moustache, overcome with emotion, told the court: “Very basically, Sarah was laid on the ground. I closed her eyes, because her eyes were still open.”
As a family of Liverpool season ticket holders living in north London, Jenni Hicks had been allocated a separate ticket, in the north stand, from Trevor Hicks and the girls. After the match was abandoned, she went to a sweet shop where the family had arranged to meet afterwards, and waited for hours, but they never came.
Speaking quietly in the witness box, wearing a fawn jacket, Jenni Hicks said she became increasingly worried for her family’s safety, but was told by South Yorkshire police officers first to wait at her car, then taken to a police station, then to the Hillsborough boys club, which was being used for desperate relatives to wait. Finally a social worker, Alan Dunkley, offered to take her to the hospital, which she said was “the first sensible suggestion I’d heard”.
When she arrived, she was told Vicki had died.
“I asked if I could see her, and was told no, I wasn’t allowed to see her, because she was the property of the coroner of South Yorkshire – she was nothing to do with me,” Jenni Hicks said.
She said police then took her back to the gymnasium at Hillsborough, and showed her a large board of “horrific” polaroid photographs of the many people who had died. She told the police officer she could not see Sarah’s picture, and he replied: “Look again, love.”
Then she did see Sarah’s picture. Vicki had been taken fron the hospital to the gymnasium too, and Jenni said she got on her knees and hugged both girls.
“I remember that [Vicki] was quite cold,” she said, “then I hugged Sarah, and Sarah was as warm as toast. It is one of the things I’ve regretted, that I didn’t insist somebody came along, because I can’t get over how warm Sarah was when I hugged her that night in the gymnasium.”
At the end of his evidence, Greaves asked for permission to say a few words to the Hickses. His voice trembling with emotion, he said:
“Just mere words cannot comfort Trevor or Jenni Hicks, or remove their sense of loss, pain and utter devastation. But I would like to take this opportunity to say to them that I did my very best for Sarah in the circumstances. I could not have done more. For the time I was with Sarah, Sarah was with someone who cared. Sarah was not alone.”
The inquests continue.
