The greatest day became one of the darkest days. How could this happen? One moment, there was a ticker tape explosion, the sky thick with plumes of red smoke, the new smell of celebration.
Then, in the next step, came the piercing screams, flashing blue lights, and the overwhelming sense of horror. Fans had descended in their hundreds of thousands in celebration. They left after having witnessed a tragedy, knowing a city was mourning.
We don’t know the motives or intentions behind one lone man’s decision to plough a car into revellers, but we do see the impact it has had and the nightmare that has been inflicted.
How will anyone be able to think about Liverpool’s 20th league championship without making the association with 6 pm on Monday, May 26, when the worlds of innocent people caved in?
To walk along The Strand at 8:30 p.m., to see it empty except for a few police officers in high-visibility jackets, was surreal, like a scene from an apocalyptic Hollywood film. Even the Queen Anne, Cunard’s majestic cruise liner, which is visiting Liverpool, looked like a ghost ship alongside the Pier Head.
On the floor were bottles, empty smoke canisters, the remnants of those tickertape cannons, and even a discarded picnic chair, but there were no people. The reason for that became obvious as you looked up Water Street.
Nothing prepares you for seeing an inflatable, blue-and-white crime scene tent surrounded by ambulances and police vans, and the faces of the officers who stood like sentries told you the gravity of the situation.
Water Street is associated with great journeys. It is where so many of the old shipping companies had their offices in days gone ,by and it is even mentioned in chapter six of Moby-Dick.
But now it had become synonymous with darkness, fear, and the kind of incident you have watched unfold in mainland Europe, but never thought would happen on your doorstep.
Daragh Leavy, a lifelong Liverpool fan, had driven over from Ireland on Saturday with his brother, Mark. They stood at the top of Water Street, 7.45 pm5pm, haunted and traumatised.
A few seconds before, a jumbled bunch of helium balloons, spelling ‘Champions 20’, had drifted over the top of the Town Hall. It seemed symbolic as the happiness that they signified drifted away too.
‘We are lucky to be alive,’ said Daragh. ‘We were walking down to the NCP, where our car was parked, staying to the right of Water Street. We saw the car. He came roaring down the road, around a police van.
‘He had hit one person, and we saw him go through a lot of people. There were a lot of people trapped under the car, 20 or 30 were trying to lift it to get them out. We had come to celebrate, and then we saw this. It was awful.’
Mark added: ‘I will never forget the noise of people being hi,t and I will never forget the look on a policeman’s face and his uniform covered in blood. My God, what he must have seen.’
Chris Jones, from Heswall, Wirral, had met up with family and friends at Rigby’
