A Liverpool fan from Ellesmere Port told a senior policeman ‘you and your men have a lot to answer for this’ after 96 fans were killed in the Hillsborough Disaster, the inquests have heard.
Maxwell Ross, a retired senior customs and excise officer, approached the senior officer after helping stricken survivors from the fatal crush on the Leppings Lane terrace of the stadium.
Mr Ross had left his home in Ellesmere Port to go to the game, while his wife and daughter went shopping in Sheffield.
After fans were crushed, Mr Ross used his limited first aid skills learned in the Boy Scouts to assist the ‘walking wounded’ and others injured in the disaster, the hearing in Warrington was told this week.
Mr Ross said he witnessed no help for injured fans and an apparent lack of communication between police officers who were slow to respond as the tragedy unfolded.
Afterwards as he left the ground he saw a line of policemen and another officer with silver braid on his hat, who he took to be very senior.
He approached the officer and said: “You and your men have a lot to answer for this.”
Mr Ross told the hearing: “He shouted ‘come here’ and went to grab my arm. I was concerned about my wife and daughter. I didn’t hang around.”
Earlier Mr Ross said he had been delayed on his way to the FA Cup Semi-Final against Nottingham Forest on April 15, 1989, and only got to the game shortly before 3pm, entering pen four, behind the goal, where the fans were crushed to death.
Mr Ross said: “There was so much screaming and shouting and carrying on, and people trying to climb up the fences on either side, both onto the pitch and to the side, and you could see there was a lot of consternation down below.”
Mr Ross told the hearing he did not see any ambulances or medical equipment on hand to help and told a policemen that a fleet of ambulances were needed, but the officer ‘did not respond’.
Christina Lambert QC, counsel for the inquests, questioned Mr Ross about the co-ordination of the response by the emergency services on the day.
Mr Ross replied: “Well, I didn’t see any. It was rather disturbing, and I wondered whether we were going to get any officers to come and hopefully they would be of some use.”
The witness said at one point a police officer was standing on the concourse behind the terraces while he was assisting an injured fan.
Mr Ross asked the officer for help and the policeman, “stood over him and prodded him with his foot and said, ‘Well he’s breathing isn’t he?’”
The witness agreed at the time of the disaster he was aged 57, a senior customs and excise officer who sometimes worked with Merseyside Police and was not a man to “rush to judgement” on the actions of the police.
Mr Ross said he would stand by a statement he wrote two days after the disaster, detailing what he had witnessed.
In it he said there was a ‘lack of action’ from police on the scene.
The hearing was adjourned until the following morning.
