Events
A dark green Jeep Cherokee, registration number L808 RDT, travelling at a speed estimated by a witness as about 30 mph (48 km/h), struck security bollards at the main entrance to Glasgow International Airport. The vehicle was reported to have several petrol containers and propane gas canisters on board. One eyewitness said flames issued from beneath the car when it hit the building, while another eyewitness said it appeared the driver was trying to drive through the terminal doors. According to reports, the car was occupied by two "Asian-looking" men. Police indicated the vehicle burst into flames when it was driven at the terminal. An eyewitness noted that a man got out of the car and began to fight with police. Another eyewitness said that the man was throwing punches and repeatedly shouting "Allah". The man was arrested and later identified as Bilal Abdulla, a UK-born doctor of Iraqi descent who was working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. Another man exited the car and ran into the terminal building while he was on fire and began writhing on the ground, before being kicked by a member of the public, John Smeaton, who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his heroism. Sky News reported that petrol was spread from containers by the occupants when they got out of the car. During the subsequent investigation propane gas canisters were removed from the car. A Strathclyde Police spokesman confirmed the two men in the car were arrested, one of them badly burned. A witness stated that a passenger of the vehicle was aflame from head to toe, as he struggled with police, with some witnesses reported to have shouted "just let him burn". The man was initially taken to Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley before being transferred to the intensive care unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary due to it having a specialist burns unit, where he died on 2 August. The Jeep was removed early on the morning of Sunday 1 July before flights resumed and the airport was partially opened.
Read more about this topic: 2007 Glasgow International Airport Attack
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. The most exact calculator has no prescience that somewhat incalculable may not balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)