The first words spoken by the hero taxi driver from Sunday's terror attack at the Liverpool Women's Hospital have been revealed.
David Perry has been praised for his quick-thinking actions after reportedly locking bomber suspect Emad Al Swealmeen in his taxi when he saw the 32-year-old Iraq-native had a device with him.
The bomb detonated moments before Mr Perry was seen escaping the car, but his actions to lock the terrorist in the vehicle potentially saved countless lives.
And now, hospital security guard Darren Knowles, who was one of the first on the scene, has told The Mirror what Mr Perry said as he was leaving the car – “Someone has blown me up”.
Mr Knowles, who recalled how Mr Perry was crawling out of the car, blood “pouring” from his ear and neck while screaming for his wife, said: “I just grabbed him and tried to get him to safety.”
“David was just so disorientated and confused.
“He was trying to tell us, ‘There is a passenger, there is a passenger’.
“I was trying to say to him, ‘Is he still in there?’, and he was saying, ‘He has tried to blow me up, he has tried to blow me up’.
“It all happened in a flash. I was just pumping my tyre up on my car. I saw the taxi pull up as they do.
“I heard a loud bang and thought it was mechanical failure in the taxi. I thought the engine had caught fire.
“But then I saw the taxi driver run out. He was panicking and screaming, ‘Someone has blown me up’.”
He described how Mr Perry's left ear was “pumping” with blood, and also saw a shrapnel injury on the back of his neck.
He grabbed Mr Perry and tried to get him to safety because he had a feeling that “something else was going to go off” – which thankfully did not happen.
He added: “My first priority was stopping the taxi driver going back to the car, because he had his phone and other things in it and he wanted to get them out. I took him to the nearest nurse to get medical attention.
“I did not think about myself I was thinking of getting the taxi driver to safety before anything else went up.
“He was screaming, panicking. We were just saying, ‘Calm down, let’s just see to you’.
“I handed him over to a nurse. He went into the staff entrance and sat down there and that was the last I saw of him.”
“He was just in a state of shock. God bless the guy. I wish him a speedy recovery.”
The bomber, also known as Enzo Almeni, died at the scene, while Mr Perry's wife Rachel took to social media a day after the attack to say that her husband was “lucky to be alive”.
She said that it was an “utter miracle” that he had escaped from the vehicle.
Police have said the motives behind the planned terrorist attack are not yet clear, and a post-mortem examination has listed Swealmeen's cause of death as injuries from the fire.
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