A WEXFORD WOMAN who was on Westminster Bridge when the London attack happened has recounted her attempts to save a man’s life.
Yesterday Joanne Crofton told South East Radio‘s Morning Mix that she was training as a tour guide on an open-bus that was going across Westminster Bridge when the attack happened.
“I was on the microphone and was actually looking the wrong way, then there was an absolute crash. There was five people down, five people we could see.”
She noticed a person on Westminster Pier who had been knocked down who she tried to save.
I went down there because there was one person that wasn’t moving – they were non-responsive. I was trying to get him to breathe and I was trying to get his heart beating.
“While I was doing CPR there was emergency sirens going off all over the place – everyone was ringing for an ambulance so it just got overloaded.”
Airplanes, armed response units, armed police. It was just a nightmare. I mean I was expecting someone to come our and shout… ‘No one get up’.
She said she went down the stairs of the bus so fast that her own safety didn’t occur to her.
At the time the adrenaline kicks in and you do what you can. I don’t think it was enough. I think there were five people dead, and the person I was helping was severely wounded. So I just keep wondering if I’d done enough.
“It was like something out of an action film or a horror film, it was just absolutely horrible what was going on.
“There were people lying in pools of blood. Horrendous and surreal, are the words I’d use.”
‘I don’t feel like a hero’
Joanne continued to give the man CPR until the paramedics came, which she says she learned from the Order of Malta in Wexford.
She said that when she came home she had 41 messages left by family and friends asking if she was alright. Joanne said yesterday that she’s still shocked, and said she’s also been offered counselling after the traumatic event.
Tory MP Tobias Ellwood was praised as a hero for his immediate efforts to save the policeman who was fatally stabbed in the Westminster attack.
“People are calling me a hero. I really don’t feel like a hero. For me there was something I could do so I did it. Does that make me a hero?”
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