The Telegraph have today managed to find the man who left the fake bomb in an Old Trafford toilet that led to a full evacuation and the abandoning of Manchester United's final game of the Premier League season.
A device believed to be an explosive was found in a toilet in the north-west corner of Old Trafford, which caused the Army Bomb Disposal Unit to perform a controlled explosion to diffuse the situation. Greater Manchester United police described the device as being "incredibly life-like" but "unviable". It later transpired that the device was a dummy device accidentally left behind following a security exercise.
Christopher Reid is a retired Scotland Yard police chief who founded his own security company, Security Search Management & Solutions Ltd, and while accepting full responsibility for the error, he believes that Manchester United overreacted in abandoning the game.
Look, I'll be honest, they didn't need to evacuate the stadium.
It was an inanimate device. Ultimately, I am responsible, I went up to Manchester to conduct the training at the club.
The evacuation and cancelling of the game will cost Manchester United in the region of £3 million, and the club are expected to end their working relationship with Reid's security firm. Reid himself apologised to the fans, and also admitted he fears being "hung out to dry" by the club.
In this episode, Reid should not worry about United tarnishing his reputation. This entire saga seems to do that by itself.
UPDATE: In the last few moments, Manchester United's Executive Vice-Chairman Ed Woodward has released a statement, in which he said he was proud of the club's response to the situation, while further confirming the details of the story. According to Woodward, the reason sniffer dogs were unable to detect the device was because it contained no explosives and was used in an exercise not involving dogs.
According to the club the facts are:
• On the discovery of a suspect package, the police and the club worked quickly and closely to identify the threat, make people safe and evacuate the ground calmly and efficiently.
• Fans of both clubs behaved impeccably and the evacuation – the first of its type in the UK – was a complete success.
• Following investigation, the device proved to have been left in error following the training of dog handlers by a sub contractor.
• The contractor had signed the device as having been recovered along with the 13 other devices at the end of the exercise.
• That device could not have been detected by sniffer dogs on the routine matchday search of the 100 Club, as it contained no explosives and was used in an exercise training handlers not dogs.
The statement from Woodward is as follows.
Once a live situation was identified, the club and police had no option but to treat the matter as a potential terror threat; we could not have assumed it was a training exercise error. Presented with the same situation in the future, we would take the same action.
We have worked very closely with the police and counter-terrorism specialists for many years now and enjoy their support on a daily basis.
For tomorrow’s (Tuesday) rearranged match against Bournemouth, we are working closely with Greater Manchester Police to ensure that robust security measures continue to be of the highest priority.
We are conducting a detailed evaluation with the help of the police and will share our findings across the rest of the game. Valuable lessons will have been learned from yesterday’s events and it is important that those are shared with other stadium operators to ensure that the safety of the public remains the first duty of us all.
