Bomb survivor tells of eery moving hand in Tube blast crater

Terence Hiscock, who boarded the same Circle line train as 22-year-old Shehzad Tanweer, rushed to help the wounded after the Aldgate explosion.

But as he tended to seriously injured Andrew Brown, he glanced down to see the horrific image of a person’s hand beneath him.

“I was trying to free Mr Brown’s legs. He said to me: ‘Be careful moving things around: I think there’s someone down there’.

“I looked into the crater and I could see a hand down there which I thought might have been moving,” he said.

But he saw no body and continued to help Mr Brown, he told the inquest into the deaths of the 52 people who died.

“Perhaps had there been someone who had been better able to assist the situation then I was, able to deal with it, might have made a better judgment that perhaps there was someone who could be rescued, could be saved,” he said.

“I just sensed that the person was alive but I believed that the hand was moving slowly – not twitching – just moving slowly. But more than that, I couldn’t say.”

Mr Hiscock, a deputy head teacher, had been on a one-off trip to London on July 7 2005.

But he found himself on the ill-fated Aldgate train by accident after he boarded the wrong Tube on his way to a conference in Westminster. Minutes later there was a “brief flash”, he told the inquest at the High Court.

Describing the aftermath, he said he clambered down on to the track before hearing cries for help.

Rather than following his fellow travellers to the station, he used the wreckage to hoist himself back into the train.

There he saw passenger Martine Wright “crushed up against the side of the carriage”, he said.

“She was calling out for help, she was losing blood but she was calm and firm and insistent about what she wanted.

“She didn’t seem to be panicked; she just knew that she was in difficulty and needed help.”

But he told the inquest her legs were “very severely injured” and he realised “moving her was not a good idea”. He then turned to Mr Brown who was also trapped.

He said: “The floor of the carriage wasn’t visible, there was glass, debris, cladding, plastic, ceiling tiles, all manner of debris covered in grey dust.”

Another young man, in his late teens or early 20s, was sitting on the floor, leaning up against the wreckage, he said.

“Most of his clothes had been blown off, he had the remains of a shirt, underpants, shoes.

“He was blackened and he was just staring at his hands,” he added.

“I have no recollection of him saying anything. I spoke to him: he didn’t answer or look at me.”

Mr Hiscock eventually left the carriage and made his way to the station concourse as emergency workers took over.

The hearing continues.