Duckenfield, who was promoted and appointed match commander shortly before the semi-final on 15 April 1989, is accused of a series of “extraordinarily bad” failures, amounting to gross negligence manslaughter, which led to the crush that killed 96 people. That escalated the risk of injury “into the realm of disaster”, Matthews said. Another, Stephen Allen, an off-duty Metropolitan police officer, would describe “a scene of horror”, with a pile of six dead people on top of four who were semi-conscious. The criminal charge of manslaughter against Duckenfield relates only to 95 of the people who died. The 96th victim, Tony Bland, suffered critical brain damage and died four years later in 1993, when life support in hospital was lawfully withdrawn.

Source: The Guardian January 17, 2019 15:22 UTC