A FIREFIGHTER who attended Grenfell Tower has today described how "young thugs" angry at the emergency response hurled abuse at them - as they didn't realise they were trying to rescue victims from the inferno.
Elliott Juggins, who was just two months into the development stage of his career when he was sent to tackle the inferno on June 14 last year, also revealed how firefighters were pelted with objects.
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Seventy-two people died in the deadly blaze in June last year
Desperate 999 call to emergency services by Behailu Kebede after his fridge appears to have caught fire in Grenfell Tower
The blaze broke out in the 24-storey block in North Kensington, West London, in June 2017, leaving 72 people dead.
Mr Juggins was part of a team that helped save four trapped residents from the 14th floor.
In a written statement to the Grenfell Tower inquiry, the firefighter recalled seeing three people dash out of flat 113, followed by a fourth, believed to be Omar al-Haj Ali, who grabbed his shoulder.
He quickly rushed to the stairwell with the residents and helped them down to the ground floor.
Fellow firefighter Peter Herrera mistakenly thought the flat was now empty, leaving behind Mr al-Haj Ali's brother, Mohammad, mother and son Zainab and Jeremiah Deen, and Denis Murphy.
They all died that night.
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A firefighter told the Grenfell Tower inquiry that he was abused by thugs who didn't realise he was trying to save victimsCredit: Getty Images
Mr Juggins recounted taking the four 14th floor occupants to the ground floor and then venturing outside - where he was accosted by crowds watching from a nearby road.
He said: "Having got out, we were then bombarded with what I could describe as young thugs.
"They appeared to be standing on cars and there were about five or six of them. I believe they were all male.
"They were giving us abuse, throwing objects at us and they were basically saying, 'Why aren't we doing anything, why aren't we in there'. There was a fence separating them from us.
"I can understand their frustration but what they didn't realise is that we had just come from being in the tower."
Police were alerted to the disturbance and dealt with the incident, he said.
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A diagram of the kitchen in flat 16 on the fourth floor flat, where the fire is believed to have been startedCredit: PA:Press Association
Mr Juggins went up the burning tower four times that night - more than most firefighters who have so far given evidence to the inquiry.
His statement said tension continued to build on the streets surrounding the block as the fire raged.
Describing a moment later in the night, he said: "The riot police had been called by this point as they were dealing with the trouble that was going on in the streets, the objects that were being thrown and due to the falling debris.
"So we needed to be escorted under shields from the safe area back into the building."
Elsewhere today fire investigator Matthew Leaver told the inquiry the fire probably started in a fridge-freezer on the fourth floor, before spreading at catastrophic speed up the building's external face.
Mr Leaver recalled thinking the burning tower must have been made of wood.
He wrote: "I could see by that stage that it was a fully developed fire on a monumental scale. There was a massive dark plume of smoke coming off the top of it."
The inquiry continues.
Emotional moment one of the first firefighters at Grenfell, Charles Batterbee, recalls seeing the full extent of the fire spreading up the outside the tower
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