LOCAL REACTION:A NEIGHBOUR of Constable Kerr has described his sense of shock and helplessness as he witnessed the aftermath of the explosion shortly before 4pm on Saturday.
“I was just sitting in my kitchen with a cup of tea and the next thing was this thud – a bang. I said ‘what the f*** was that’ and I went out the back to the patio,” said the Highfield resident, who asked that his identity be withheld.
“I thought it was a gas explosion . . . I could see a couple of people running, one of them was a neighbour and he shouted to me ‘don’t go over, don’t go over’. I asked what was wrong, and he said to me ‘there’s a car after exploding and there’s a man in it’.
“I went on over just to see and he followed me with another two men, one had his mobile phone.
“I went on over to see what was what, and if there was anything I could do. But there was no movement [by the victim] and there were parts of the car everywhere.
“Then there was just panic and people came out. A wee fire was starting at the bottom of the car, and then I could see fuel or whatever. It was coming out of the bottom of the car. I thought ‘f***, this thing could go up’.
“We started looking for fire extinguishers and a neighbour ran back to his house and he got one. By the time he came back again the police were there . . . And we just left it to them. The ambulance was there; the whole lot were there.
“There was nothing you could do. The body was just lying there. It’s something you just don’t want to see. It’s not what anybody wants about this place. I only came back [to Tyrone] in 1998 after being away during all the time of the Troubles. I went away when it started here; got out of it. I thought them days were gone.
“Under the car you could see the blood and everything, under the car. So probably [the device] was in under the car under the driver’s side and he took the full force of it under the driver’s seat and it probably ruined the poor man’s body.”
“You don’t want to get too close, but it’s not our job to do it I suppose. There was too much pandemonium at the time.
“People are devastated . . . There were kids out playing there five minutes before [the explosion] and the only reason they were in the house was that it had started to rain.
“The marathon went past there in the morning and that [device] was sitting there. There were plenty of police there at the time directing traffic and stuff. You feel numb.
“It sets everything back in this country.”