At first, the sound of children screaming and shouting barely registered with John Hayes as he sat at his desk last Monday morning.
Certainly, it wasn’t unusual. The noise came from kids spilling out of a dance class – this one Taylor Swift-themed – held in the studio below his Southport office. ‘They’re always excitable when they leave, so it seemed normal,’ he said.
What wasn’t normal, he later noted, was how the cries gave way to something more ‘sinister’ – prolonged high-pitched screeching. Quite simply the screaming never seemed to stop. It prompted one of Mr Hayes’s colleagues at his legal services company to look out of the window onto the car park below. ‘There’s a girl on the ground bleeding out’, she shouted.
Some force compelled the 63-year-old father of three and grandfather to sprint the length of his office. ‘I just wanted to help,’ said Mr Hayes. ‘I went round the corner and opened the doors to our office, which are at the top of a staircase.’
In doing so he crossed into a nightmarish landscape. Panic, terror, confusion. A knifeman on the rampage. Two young girls already dead, another fatally wounded.
At first, the sound of children screaming and shouting barely registered with John Hayes as he sat at his desk last Monday morning
Police officers and a police van block the vehicle entrance at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court as Southport knifeman Axel Rudakubana appeared in court on Thursday
‘I was confronted by a young girl who was heavily bloodstained and looked like she’d been catastrophically injured – and this guy with a bloodstained knife stood in front of me, ‘ said Mr Hayes.
‘He then came at me with the knife, and I tried to put my hands up. He took a swipe towards my head and he just caught me very slightly on my right arm and I went backwards.’
‘And it was really quite surreal because he was in this sort of tiger pose. At this point the knifeman and Mr Hayes were ‘grappling’ just inside his office – while his oblivious colleagues continued looking out of the window at the the scenes of chaos in the car park.
‘I tried to grab the knife from him, but he stuck it in my thigh. I didn’t even realise he’d stabbed me at first. It was only when I tried to kick him with my right leg that I fell over because my left leg had been quite badly injured.’
An artists impression of Axel Muganwa Rudakubana appearing in court
Mr Hayes has to use crutches after Axel Rudakubana stabbed him as he tried to disarm him
Emergency services at the home of 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana in Old School Close, Banks, near Southport on Thursday
The blade plunged nearly five inches into his thigh, narrowly missing his femoral artery.
‘The scary bit is, [if he’d hit the artery] that would have killed me probably.’
By all accounts Mr Hayes is a modest, equable man not normally given to even minor confrontations.
But here he was fighting for his life – and the lives of others. Later it would be said that but for his actions the outcome might well have been more catastrophic. Still, he insists he’s no hero. Others would beg to differ.
He went on: ‘I shouted and one of my colleagues came around the corner and the attacker has then bolted it back towards the area where the class was taking place and I got the impression he was holed-up in there.’
Next he recalled the arrival of armed police shouting ‘get on the floor’.
The blade plunged nearly five inches into his thigh, narrowly missing his femoral artery
Grieving locals looking at flower tributes for the three girls killed in the attack
Although some children were able to flee into the car park, Mr Hayes believes the knifeman may have locked the external doors to the building from the inside because when officers had to ‘smash their way in’.
‘Whether I helped prevent him from hurting anyone else I don’t know,’ he said. ‘At that stage I wasn’t thinking straight to be honest.
‘Thinking back I would have liked to have done more but trying to wrestle a knife from an attacker isn’t the easiest thing to do, particularly when he’s already stuck it in you.
‘You’d like to think you were a bit more Bruce Willis about the whole thing.
‘Hopefully, what I did allowed people to get out of the building. If I have saved someone’s life that’s great.’
But his wife Helen, 57, said: ‘A police officer told me that 100% he helped save Leanne’s life.’
By all accounts Mr Hayes is a modest, equable man not normally given to even minor confrontations. But here he was fighting for his life – and the lives of others
Leanne Lucas, 35, was the yoga teacher and one organisers of the dance class who was seriously injured as she tried to protect children.
Mr Hayes says the real heroes were the police and paramedics. ‘And there was a nurse who was really comforting.
‘I just wanted somebody to hold my hand because I thought I might bleed to death and I was in quite a bit of pain. She was just so comforting.’
Meanwhile his colleague Josh applied a tourniquet using a strap from some sailing equipment that was stored in the loft of their office.
As he was stretchered out of the building he recalls thinking it was a ‘lovely, sunny day’ and how it contrasted with the ‘blue, flashing lights and paramedics all over the place’.
Messages of support from around the globe because of his actions have both comforted and bemused him.
‘It’s struck me how far this incident has resonated.
‘Some people have said to me, ‘We’ve got two daughters and we’d be really glad if someone like you was around if something similar happened to them which is quite heartwarming. But it won’t bring those kids back.
He was angered about disorder in the town following the tragedy, with bricks and other objects thrown at police as they tried to protect a mosque.
‘I think it’s bizarre that the very people who were helping injured people one day were getting bricks hurled at them the next.’
