Old Trafford Bomb Scare

Security chief says Old Trafford fake bomb scare was “entirely my mistake”.

16:27 16 May 2016

Chris Reid, the managing director of Security Search Management & Solutions Ltd took full responsibility for the Old Trafford fake bomb scare that lead to thousands of people being evacuated from the ground.

 

The dummy bomb was left behind after a training exercise last week.

 

Mr Reid, a retired Scotland Yard police officer, said: "This mistake is entirely mine. I have to take full responsibility for leaving a training item behind on Wednesday."

 

Greater Manchester's mayor and police and crime commissioner, Tony Lloyd, said: "What's almost impossible to understand is how in placing so many dummies for an exercise, those dummies were not counted in again and in counting them in, to find that one is missing, if that was, as I understand it on Wednesday, really people shouldn't be searching all the way through till it's found, whether on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Friday, but certainly long before 20 minutes before kick-off of a major game at a time when already tens of thousands of people were in the ground.

 

"I think most of us would have assumed first of all it couldn't happen and the exercise went wrong in the way it did without remedial steps long before Sunday, but actually I think it's also astonishing that there isn't a routine sweeping of the ground to find something that seemingly was discovered quite easily once the sweep was taking place 20 minutes before kick-off, but far too late on."