Teen girl recalls moment she suffered horrific shrapnel injuries in Manchester terror attack as she takes her first steps since bomb blast
A TEENAGE girl has recalled the moment she suffered horrific shrapnel injuries in the Manchester terror attack as she takes her first steps since the bomb blast.
Lucy Jarvis, 17, thought she "was on fire" after her body was hit by more than a dozen pieces of shrapnel as she left the Ariana Grande concert in May.
The brave teenager was rushed to Salford Royal Hospital, where surgeons spent 14 hours battling to save her.
Recalling the horrifying evening, which killed 22 and injured 59, she said: "I don't remember hearing a bang or anything - just feeling really really hot.
"And then I dropped to the floor. To be honest I thought I was on fire.
"I didn't know what had gone on.
"I just looked down to my legs and I saw quite a lot of blood."
Dad David Jarvis described the heart-wrenching moment he eventually tracked his daughter down to a hospital in the city.
He said: "I don’t know how long we’d been there, 15, 20 minutes, it was just getting more and more frightening.
"If it could be any more frightening than it already was.
"I then I remember a nurse coming in and saying you’ve got to come with me now, we marched down this corridor not knowing what to expect."
Lucy underwent several operations and was finally able to leave hospital seven weeks later.
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She was filmed taking her first steps on crutches in documentary Manchester: 100 Days After The Attack, which aired on ITV tonight.
The teenager said she is now hoping to go back to college next month and be in a "normal setting again".
She said: "I’m hoping to go back to college in September, so I’ll be able to see my friends again and do normal things like college work, which I have not done any of.
";But yeah I am excited to do that in a normal setting again."
The documentary also featured other brave survivors, including eight-year-old Lily Harrison who suffered a shrapnel wound and a bruised lung after being thrown to the floor in the blast.
Her parents, Adam Harrison and Lauren Thorpe, from Heaton Moor, Stockport, were also injured with the latter having to undergo three operations in just seven days after sustaining leg injuries.
Ms Thorpe says at one stage she thought her daughter was dead as she fell in and out of consciousness and appeared to stop breathing.
As part of the programme, the youngster was reunited for the first time with the hero cop, Pc Cath Daley, who saved her life on that night.
Pc Daley, who has served as a police officer for 25 years, decided they could not wait for an ambulance so she drove the family to hospital in her police van.
After she dropped them off and warned medics that an influx of casualites were on the way, the officer raced back to the scene to tend to more of the injured from the blast and later joined search teams to ensure another bomb had not been left.
Ms Thorpe told the officer: "We're just really grateful because without you... it could have been a completely different situation. I know you just say you were just doing your job but we just don't know how to say thank you enough."
Adam Lawler, 15, who attended the concert with best friend Olivia Campbell-Hardy also featured on the programme.
He told how he planned to give the teenager's mum away at her wedding to fiance Paul Hodgson in November after she was tragically killed in the atrocity.
Charlotte said: "She [Olivia] adored Adam, she was his best friend, she did think the world of him.
"He's my little hero. He gave my little girl the best night of her life, and I'll never ever stop thanking him for that.
"I've got that much admiration for the lad that I've even asked him to give me away at the wedding."
Adam said: "I want to live my life as Liv would've done. Be kind, be good, be funny, be brilliant, so that's why I say 'Don't go forward in anger. Love spreads'."
Survivor Martin Hibbert was left paralysed by the blast, while his daughter suffered a serious head injury.
Martin told the show’s cameras how first aiders thought his daughter was dead and covered her with a blanket.
He explained: “Designated First Aid people were walking around.
"They’d actually put a blanket over my daughter and I was like ‘no she’s still breathing.’”
He added: “I sustained 22 separate wounds or injuries, which were all either shrapnel or nuts and bolts.
"It was just that one bolt that’s gone through her head, why couldn’t I have made it 23?”
When Martin discovered he was permanently paralysed, he was just relieved his daughter wasn’t dead.
He said: “I didn’t cry. I wasn’t angry… My daughter was alive, I was alive.
"She’s going to be in hospital for a few more months but she is awake now and she can see and she can hear, she’s just started eating, its going to be small steps… it takes as long as it takes.”
On the show, Martin marks the attack with a Manchester bee tattoo.
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