The police officer in command at the Hillsborough disaster apologised yesterday to the relatives of the 96 football fans crushed to death for his “terrible lie” in blaming Liverpool supporters for forcing open a gate.
David Duckenfield told the inquests into the fans’ deaths that he added to their relatives’ “heartache and distress” with the suggestion that Liverpool hooligans were responsible for the fatal crush on the terraces.
Mr Duckenfield, who was a chief superintendent at the time, said he had made a “dreadful mistake” in not realising the consequences of not telling Graham Kelly, then chief executive of the Football Association,that he had ordered the opening of a gate shortly before the start of the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest.
It led to a surge of hundreds of fans into central pens on the Leppings Lane terrace in April 1989.He said: “I was probably deeply ashamed, embarrassed, greatly distressed and probably did not want to admit to myself or anybody else what the situation was. What I would like to say the Liverpool families is I regret that omission and I shall regret it to my dying day.”
Mr Duckenfield, 70, said he had ordered the opening of the gates because superintendent Roger Marshall, the officer in charge at the Leppings Lane turnstiles, warned that fans would die in a crush.
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However, he did not consider that fans would head straight down the tunnel in front of them into the already crowded terrace pens surrounded by high fences
The inquests continue.