Today marks the 35 years that its been since the 97 people tragically lost their lives in the Hillsborough catastrophe, which remains the UK’s worst sporting disaster.
Families feel that they are are still yet to receive proper justice for the loss of their loved ones.
Liverpool FC fan or not, everyone knows of the events that took place on April 15th 1989. and many are old enough to remember the day and the deadly outcome of the Liverpool vs Nottingham Forest FA cup semi-final.
Despite the decades that have passed, many families still find the topic raw, as the fight for for the truth justice is ever present and has been active since the day of the disaster.
Police involved and responsible for the negligence of the safety of the fans that day, created a false narrative to avert the responsibility on to the sufferers and victims of the crush, inciting a dangerous chain of lies which lead to countless numbers of misinformation being reported and even published, including the infamous Sun Newspaper article which eventually lead to the boycotting of the sales of their papers in the entirety of Liverpool.
Judges and other higher authority figures bought into the lies propagated by the police, which led the families of the victims to launch a 25-year campaign against the infamous procedures of the first inquest, which resulted in a 1991 verdict of accidental death, until the new inquests finally concluded in 2016 that the 96 individuals who had passed away by then had been unlawfully killed. In 2021, Andrew Devine, 22, passed away from serious brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation during the Hillsborough crush. He was officially declared the 97th person to have been unlawfully killed.
On April 26, 2016, a jury found that the South Yorkshire police officer in charge of the match, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, had committed gross negligence manslaughter, which resulted in an unlawful killing. Additionally, they came to the conclusion that Liverpool supporters’ actions were not a contributing factor because, in reality, many of them had acted bravely in an attempt to save lives.
David Duckenfield finally admitted after six days of interrogation that he “was the direct cause of the deaths of 96 people” because he neglected to close a tunnel before activating gate C. He told the jury that he “froze” under pressure and didn’t think through the repercussions of allowing thousands of spectators onto already-full terraces.
Mersey Focus 