A police officer has told a jury she was “absolutely terrified” after she was floored with a punch to the face as she tried to arrest an assault suspect at Manchester Airport.
Pc Lydia Ward said she had “never experienced” such violence towards her in her police service as she suffered a broken nose in the incident at the Terminal 2 car park pay station area on July 23 last year.
She and two colleagues from Greater Manchester Police had approached Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, at a ticket machine after a report that a male fitting his description had headbutted a customer at the Starbucks cafe in T2 arrivals.
Amaaz allegedly resisted, and his brother, Muhammad Amaad, 26, is then said to have intervened as the prosecution says they inflicted a “high level of violence” on the officers.
Giving evidence on Thursday at Liverpool Crown Court, Pc Ward said the intention was to secure the suspect and take him outside, away from the crowded area.
She said Amaaz started to “tense up and resist” when she and Pc Zachary Marsden and Pc Ellie Cook took hold of him.
“Then things escalated very quickly. It just went from nought to a hundred,” she said.
“My attention was mainly on Mr Amaaz. However, I was aware the larger male, Mr Amaad, had come over, and there was some sort of fracas between him and Pc Marsden and Pc Cook, and they were trying to get him away so they could effect the arrest.
“I was trying to keep hold of Mr Amaaz’s arm and get it behind his back so I could get some cuffs on him.”
She said she recalled that Pc Marsden fell or was pushed towards some seats and that Mr Amaaz then kicked out at her colleague.
Pc Ward said: “The man in blue started booting him, kicking him really hard, and I was trying to pull him off.
“I tried to grab him off so he could stop kicking Pc Marsden. All I remember then is that he turned and he punched me straight in the face.
“I can’t really remember where it landed, but I know where my injuries were. I remember falling on the floor and everything went black.”
She told prosecutor Adam Birkby that the blow delivered was “really forceful”.
Pc Ward, a former special constable with Lancashire Police who joined GMP in 2018, said: “Never in my whole time in the police service had that level of violence been used on me before. It felt really hard.
“As I came round, all I could feel was blood pouring out of my nose. I was just thinking he has done something to my nose, face area, I didn’t know what had happened.”
Mr Birkby said: “How did you feel when you came round?”
Pc Ward replied: “I was terrified, to be honest. I was absolutely terrified. I had never experienced that level of violence towards me in my life.
“I didn’t know who was going to come up at me next. I was scared of going after this male again and being punched in the face again.”
She said at one point she pressed her police radio emergency button to call for further assistance, but the impact of the punch had knocked the battery out.
She told Mr Birkby that other people in the pay station area were “shouting stuff” and “filming on their mobile phones”.
She said: “Nobody came to assist. I felt everyone in that room was against us. To be honest, I was terrified.”
Pc Ward, who described herself as “petite” and weighing eight stone, said she deployed her Pava incapacitant spray against two men who approached Mr Amaaz when he was on the floor after a Taser had been discharged on him.
She said: “They just kept coming forward, trying to impede. I was telling them to go back, and they were not listening.”
Rosemary Fernandes, representing Amaaz, put it to Pc Ward that her client was “taken by surprise” at the ticket machine and was “shocked.”
She said: “It is important you identify yourselves as police officers, isn’t it?”
Pc Ward said: “I don’t think we had any time to do that. We didn’t have any time for rational discussion with this male as it turned violently quickly.”
Ms Fernandes said: “I put it to you that the defendant believed he was being attacked from behind, and it all happened extremely fast.
“It is the defence’s case that he punched you in lawful self-defence on the basis that you were an assailant. Do you have any comment on that?”
Pc Ward said: “I don’t know how he felt, I was an assailant.
“He turned towards me and punched me in the face. He could see I was a police officer and he could see I was a female as well.”
Footage from a body-worn video camera of a female police colleague was played to the jury, which showed a bloodied and crying Pc Ward being comforted in the aftermath of the incident.
Amaaz is alleged to have assaulted Pc Marsden and Pc Ward, causing them actual bodily harm.
He is also accused of the assault of Pc Cook and the earlier Starbucks assault of Abdulkareem Ismaeil.
Amaad is alleged to have assaulted Pc Marsden, causing actual bodily harm.
Both men, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, deny the allegations.
