The taxi driver who miraculously cheated death in the maternity hospital suicide bombing last Remembrance Day today tells of his horrific ordeal for the first time.
David Perry says he is still haunted by the “clown-like” grin on evil Emad Al-Swealmeen’s face as he glanced at him in his rear-view mirror seconds before the bomb went off.
He explains how he became increasingly nervous and suspicious about his passenger during the fateful journey to Liverpool Women’s hospital .
And David, 46, says he felt an odd and “chilling silence” behind him as he tried to make small talk and asked the bomber if his wife had had a baby.
Moments later, as he pulled up at the hospital entrance, Syrian Al-Swealmeen inexplicably triggered the suicide device meant to kill mothers and babies.
David’s first thought was he had been tail-ended – until, in shock, he smelt burning flesh and scrambled out of the blazing car with a fractured back, shrapnel wounds and multiple burns.
Dazed and with blown eardrums he even tried to get back into the car to find his phone so he could call his wife.
Now, one year on, he says: “Even now I don’t think anyone can understand how I’m alive. But my injuries are nothing when you think he could have gone into the hospital and done a lot more damage than getting me.”
Yet remarkably David feels no hate towards the bomber – instead seeing him as a “poor lad who had issues”.
He feels it was “fate” he was the driver to collect the bomber on November 14 last year. “It was a normal work day.
“But it’s the strangest thing, I thought ‘something is going to happen today’. He chose the fare himself off the on-screen display as the pick-up address, Rutland Avenue, was not far from him.
But his concern began when he had an unusually long wait outside the Toxteth block of flats before Al-Swealmeen came out. “He had a Middle East accent. I remember him having a backpack or bag.
“ He was so quick getting in behind the seat. He sank out of the way in my blind spot. I thought, ‘this isn’t right, why is he doing this?’. All he said was ‘women’s hospital’.”
Then it was silence as David began the five minute trip. A cabbie who likes chatting, he felt strangely uncomfortable. As a dad himself he tried to start small talk.
“Just before getting to the hospital, I said to him ‘has your wife had a baby mate?’ But I got no response at all and I thought ‘something is not right here’.
“I’ve looked in the mirror and I’ve just got this picture of a clown smiling at me and holding something.”
Then the bomb went off – but David’s first thought was: “Why has a wagon just smashed into me”. He says the voice of a “guardian angel” told him to get out of his Ford Focus estate.
As he put his weight against the door, his seatbelt fell away. “A flash of light hit me. I couldn’t see anything, just white smoke. All I could smell was burning. I could smell him burning, I was burning. I knew he was all over me. When I looked down there was a bit of light where the door had billowed open at the bottom and I heard ‘get out’.” Panicked hospital staff tried to usher him inside.
But David wanted to rescue his belongings from the burning car.
He tried in vain to find his phone to ring wife Rachel. He was blue-lighted to Fazakerley Hospital where doctors were waiting. “When we got there the ambulance driver got out and said you’re going to be scared,” he recalls. “The doors opened and there were about a hundred doctors waiting. I thought ‘they haven’t told me I’m dying’. It felt like I got strapped to every possible machine and I thought, ’I’m dead here’.”
David’s back was fractured in three places, his body had multiple burns and shrapnel injuries and he was bleeding from both ears with both eardrums burst. His left ear had been almost blown off.
But checks for major internal injuries were clear and attention turned to counter terrorism police who wanted to collect evidence from him.
They laid down a tarpaulin at the hospital, while he peeled off his T-shirt and picked parts of the bomb out of his body. As CCTV footage of David’s cab exploding circulated on the news, his friends and family recognised the registration plate and feared the worst. Wife Rachel, 41, was terrified as two police officers arrived at her door. She told David later: “I knew who they were – they were in suits. I thought they were coming to tell me you were dead and I just dropped to the floor”.
When Rachel ran into the hospital to see him along with his mum, Maria, 71, David says: “I was standing up talking to the doctor. Rachel was crying and asking me what’s going on. She was in disbelief I was standing up and talking. She went to give me a hug and I said don’t as I was still covered in everything and I felt sore.”
After discharging himself, big-hearted David demanded doctors give two elderly people waiting in the corridor his bed and another that was free. He was dropped off at his mum’s house by counter terrorism agents. He wanted to reassure his family and friends he was OK.
“I could see them all talking but I couldn’t hear them. I was looking at people’s mouths and all I could hear was ‘arrrh’, my brain was just shaking.”
Later at home he recalls: “It wasn’t really until I’d had a bath that everything came off me and even then it took weeks. Bits of bomb, bits of flesh, bits of hair.” He remains haunted by the odour, saying: “Every now and then, because we live by the docks, there will be a smell of burning plastic. I think I’m back in the car with the smell of him burning on me.”
David cannot forgive Al-Swealmeen for what he did – but he has no hatred for him and instead sees him as a “poor lad who had issues who killed himself.” He says of his fateful pick-up: “It’s the worst decision I ever made. Or the best if you think it saved people from getting killed.
“Better me than a baby getting blown up.” David does not see himself as a hero but instead feels he “got away with it”. He says: “I think everyone was in disbelief I survived, especially when you see the video. If you’d have been the driver who dropped a terrorist off who killed a baby, you’d never live with yourself. It would be impossible, being a father myself.”
