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Just did a restart, so I may be OK for a while. So anyway, given that she was at school, what would the situation have been at the point where a schoolfriend snapchatted Abigail?! It was initially being reported as a couple having been found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury and that it could be down to fentanyl, but has anyone ever heard of such a massive reaction to a possible fentanyl overdose episode before, and the police declaring a major incident etc. Anyway, so in the Guardian article it says the following:
The 16-year-old thought Sergei Skripal had suffered a heart attack and alerted her mother, Alison, who is an army colonel and chief nursing officer, and they went to administer first aid.
“It was my brother’s birthday and we were out celebrating, and we were coming home and I saw them on the bench,” Abigail, who learned first aid at school, told the Salisbury-based radio station Spire FM.
“At this point people were still walking past and I don’t think anyone had really noticed them. I told my mum because I thought he was having a heart attack. We went over and it developed from there.
And the subheading to the Guardian article was:
A teenage girl was the first person to help the novichok poisoning victims Sergei and Yulia Skripal, it has emerged.
Which of course fits with what she said about how she didn’t think anyone had really noticed them.
But in the following article posted on the 29th of October re Alison McCourt’s statement to the Inquiry headlined ‘Chief army nurse who helped Skripals faced conspiracies’ it says this:
At the Dawn Sturgess Public Inquiry on October 29, two statements by Mrs Alison McCourt were read.
She is of the first people who saw the Skripals seriously unwell on a bench in the Maltings before emergency services arrived.
Mrs McCourt, chief nursing officer at British Army at the time of the incident, did not appear at the Inquiry as she was given permission to give written evidence rather than orally.
The first statement, made just days after the poisoning, described how on March 4, 2018, Mrs McCourt was in Salisbury with her family when they found Sergei and Yulia Skripal displaying concerning symptoms.
In the statement, Mrs McCourt said: “I looked at the bench, I was about 10 metres away at this point.”
There was a couple dealing with the situation but her husband said it was her “duty to help”.
Ah, so her daughter WASN’T the first person to go to the aid of the Skripals, and there was already a couple (of people) dealing with the situation. Yeah, and as if in the real world her husband would have to tell her it’s her duty to go and help. But I guess she/they don’t have to worry about the inconsistencies as they can depend on the MSM to straighten them out, or just blank them. And WHO anyway is paying attention to all the details apart from us conspiracy theory nutjobs!
I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to determine exactly what time it was when the media first cited Skripal’s name (and his background), but I came across the following earlier:
Major incident in Salisbury: everything we know so far as two people remain in a critical condition
Unconfirmed local reports of possible exposure to fentanyl
By James Somper
15:54, 5 MAR 2018 Updated 08:02, 6 MAR 2018The problem is with updates is that unless you happened to read the article BEFORE it was updated AND remember everything it said, you can’t know what was added to the article in the update, but in this particular instance, I think it was Skripal’s name, and that he was a former spy and a double agent. Thing is that further on in the article (after having mentioned his name etc) it quotes a statement made by Wiltshire Police, which was made on the Monday, and prior to the article being published/posted at 15.54:
Wiltshire Police statement in full
Temporary Assistant Chief Constable, Craig Holden, issued the following statement at a press conference in relation to the major incident declared in Salisbury: “Yesterday afternoon, at approximately 4.15pm, we received a call from a member of the public who was concerned for the welfare of two people.
“The two people – a man aged in his 60s, and a woman aged in her 30s – were found unconscious on a bench in The Maltings in Salisbury.
“Officers, as well as colleagues from the ambulance and fire services attended the scene and cordons were put in place.
“The pair, who we believe are known to each other, did not have any visible injuries and were taken to Salisbury District Hospital. They are currently being treated for suspected exposure to an unknown substance. Both are currently in a critical condition in intensive care.
“Because we are still at the very early stages of the investigation, we are unable to ascertain whether or not a crime has taken place.
“A major incident has been declared today and a multi-agency response has been co-ordinated.
“Alongside our partner agencies, we are conducting some extensive enquiries to determine exactly what led to these two people falling unconscious and clarify whether or not any criminal activity has happened.
“This has not been declared as a counter terrorism (CT) incident and we would urge people not to speculate. However, I must emphasise that we retain an open mind and we will continue to review this position. We have access to a wide range of specialist resources and services that are helping us to understand what we are or aren’t dealing with at this time.”
“The focus at this moment in time is trying to establish what has caused these people to become critically ill, and we are working with partners to prioritise this diagnosis and ensure that they receive the most appropriate and timely treatment.
“We would continue to appeal to any members of the public who may have information in relation to this incident to contact us immediately via 999. We would like to reassure members of the public that incidents of this nature are taken extremely seriously and we currently do not believe there is any risk to the wider public.
“We would like to take this opportunity to thank members of the public who have assisted us so far and respected the cordons which remain in place.
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/major-incident-salisbury-everything-know-1299544
Now I’ve no idea when this statement was made, except that it must have been made at least an hour or two before the SomersetLive article was posted, but, it doesn’t mention or include Skripal’s name etc. As with this BBC News article that I came across from March 5th, which unfortunately doesn’t state the time it was posted:
Two critical after Salisbury substance ‘exposure’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-43289194
But as I said in a recent post, I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that DS Nick Bailey said at some point (maybe in the interview with the former editor of the Sun, whose name escapes me at the moment) that when he first learnt the name of the guy found unconscious on the bench in the Maltings, a colleague of his thought to do a search on the internet and, in doing so, discovered that he was a former Russian spy and double agent etc, and it was shortly after this that he decided to go to the Maltings, and if I remember correctly, he said that he went there about 5.30pm (by which time the Skripals had been taken to hospital). And if he and his colleague determined that THEN, then surely senior officers would have been notified tout de suite.
Anyway, just to reiterate what I said in an earlier post – ie has anyone ever heard of such a massive reaction and response to what, at the time, was being put down to a possible fentanyl overdose?! Or was that just a ruse to explain away the massive reaction (and the massive reaction so as to get it into the media straight away) for what those in the know knew was shortly going to unfold??!
I just twigged that the Guardian article I referred to in an earlier post got the ruddy date wrong:
Abigail McCourt was with her family when she saw the 66-year-old former KGB spy and his daughter collapsed on a bench at the Maltings shopping centre in Salisbury on the afternoon of 5 March last year.
Astonishing!
I wouldn’t believe anything printed in The Guardian.
That article seems to have more inaccuracies than truths, if you compare it with Alison McCourts statements to the inquiry, her daughter had only pointed out the Skripals on the bench, saying one of them looked like they were having a stroke.
If it was her brother’s birthday, her mother didn’t mention it in her statement. She said they had just picked them up from boarding school. She had a row with her son in Boots, and decided to go home because of that. On their way back to the car, they came across the Skripals.
There were two people at the bench already and one was asking if anyone had any medical training, which was when the husband suggested she should help.
I have yet to find any reference to DS Bailey being at the scene at any time during the afternoon. Presumably the security services have cooked up a watertight alibi for his serious contamination? This will be presented sometime in the future no doubt, to widespread sympathy from the worlds’ media.
@Allan Howard, that’s a very good find about Col McCourt saying there were already 2 other peple assisting the Skripals. Bear in mind that news articles are often not the most reliable of sources. It will be good to see if this detail is explored any further in the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry.
You are skeptical that Col McCourt says her husband told her its her duty to help. I don’t think it improbable at all. The context in which this statement occurred is important, and we don’t have visibility of that. Again, more details might be in the inquiry.
There are other inconsistencies in the statements of the medical staff who were on the scene before the Skripals left in ambulances.
I presume they have either made assumptions from being told the Skripals had lunch in Zizzis, or someone who they discussed to event had done so.
The medics who attended describe both of the Skriplas vomiting, and said it was pasta from one of them (although I can’t remember who just now). Zizzis is a pasta restaurant and so that would be the obvious result of having a meal there, if you were framing a statement.
However, one of the Zizzis’ staff who served them, said that for a starter Julia had prawns and Sergei had calamari. They left before the main courses, because Sergei was getting agitated and pointed at his watch, as if he had to be somewhere to be in a few minutes.
So they ate little or no pasta. I don’t know about the 2018 menu of course, but the 2024 one has no pasta with either the squid or the prawns.
I’m quite surprised they did not describe the carrots that are always in vomit.
Fat Jon, one of the ambulence staff described Sergei’s vomit. Lisa Wood at about 2:30:25 on 30 Oct 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1Qlt2Ju_CcIn Zizzi you say Sergei “pointed at his watch, as if he had to be somewhere to be in a few minutes.” One of the inquiry witnesses said that Sergei complained that the food was taking too long to come and so they gave him a refund. This explanation fits well with Sergei becoming agitated and looking at his watch.
Yes, Fortnite.
They had the starters, but the main courses never arrived, so Sergei started asking for the bill. They were not given a refund, but they were not charged for the first course, because the long delay for the main was due to the ticket machine running out of paper and not sending orders to the kitchen.
The watch pointing indicates that Sergei and Yulia had an appointment with someone that afternoon; who that was we may never know. I will ignore the statement by another diner who seems very keen to fit into the preferred story by noting the couple looked ‘unwell’ because they were sitting behind him, and he had to look over his shoulder just to see them. Is that what people do in restaurants these days? The Zizzi’s staff said they saw no signs of the couple looking ‘unwell’.
It is difficult to get a precise time of when the Skripals left Zizzi’s because the staff never mention it, but one person thought it to be about 15:30. The first person to the scene on the bench said it was just after 16:00, so there is around 20–30 minutes not accounted for, where anything could have happened if the Skripals met up with the person who may have been waiting somewhere outside at the allotted time.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I believe whatever drug they were subjected to, was administered during these missing 20–30 minutes between about 15:30 and 16:00. I do not buy any of the door handle stuff, as it seems to be completely illogical.
I have browsed the newspaper archives for early mention of the incident. This is from The Daily Express but not until March 9th. (Note the bit about Sgt Bailey administering CPR at the scene).
News > UK
Russian spy latest: Hero police officer seriously injured by nerve agent namedTHE POLICE officer seriously injured as he helped former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in last weekend’s nerve agent attack has been named.
By Joey Millar
PUBLISHED: 14:54, Fri, Mar 9, 2018 | UPDATED: 14:54, Fri, Mar 9, 2018Police Sergeant Nick Bailey was named as the officer hurt as he responded to the victims in Salisbury on Sunday.
Authorities said he was “talking and engaging” with people, although he is still believed to be in a serious condition.
Sergeant Bailey administered CPR at the scene of the attack and soon became seriously unwell.
He was described as a “great character” and a “huge presence” by acting chief constable of Wiltshire Police Kier Pritchard.
He said this afternoon: “I’ve known Nick for many years, he’s a great character. He’s a huge presence in Wiltshire Police – well-liked, well-loved, a massively dedicated officer.
“He’s clearly receiving high specialist treatment. He’s well, he’s sat up.
“He’s clearly not the Nick that I know, but he’s in the safe hands of the medical professionals working in Salisbury District Hospital.
“But he’s very anxious, very concerned. He did his best on that night. I’m proud of all of our staff who attended this incident at the Maltings on that night. They responded to try to protect people who were ill, with limited information.”
Chief Constable Pritchard said yesterday: “We can confirm that a Wiltshire police officer, who was part of the initial response, is also in a serious condition and receiving intensive care.
“Our thoughts are also with him, his family and friends.
“I recognise colleagues in Wiltshire Police will be deeply affected by this and we will provide support to those affected.”
Mr Skripal and his daughter remain in a critical condition.
It comes amid a flurry of activity in Salisbury, where police sealed off the gravestone of Mr Skripal’s wife Liudmila, who was buried in 2012, and the memorial stone of his son, Alexander, who was cremated last year.
They are located at separate sites in the London Road Cemetery with each guarded by a police officer.
Hundreds of investigators, led by counter-terror police, are working to find out who is responsible for what is feared to be a sophisticated plot amid heightened tensions between Britain and Russia.
Fat Jon, thanks for the clarification about Sergei refund issue.
I disagree that someone point to their watch is stong evidence that they have an upcoming appointment. Given that Sergei was indeed annoyed enough about the food delay to complain to the staff, then during him complaining to the staff about the delay I can well imagine him pointing to his watch as if to say, in an agitated way “Excuse me, manager, but the food is taking way too long. We ordered it at 3pm, and now its 3:30!” and then points at his watch to prove his point.
Are you able to post a link to the Daily Express 9 March 2018 article (or an archived of it)? I couldn’t find it in a google search.
The article Fat Jon posted above is
Archive (from 9 Mar 2018)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180311075308/https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/929056/russian-spy-nerve-agent-attack-police-officer-sergeant-nick-bailey-Sergei-Skripal-yuliaSorry Fortnite but your version of the Zizzi watch tapping incident is just guesswork.
Maybe read the witness statements of Chloe Pattinson and Brendan Mackey before creating fantasy scenarios? The staff statements mention him saying “I’m in a rush, let me pay” and “I want the bill, there’s no time”.
@ Jon
you say (@ 19.02 on Nov 2nd) in response to the Guardian article I cited that:
I wouldn’t believe anything printed in The Guardian.
That article seems to have more inaccuracies than truths, if you compare it with Alison McCourts statements to the inquiry, her daughter had only pointed out the Skripals on the bench, saying one of them looked like they were having a stroke.
I just did a search re >abigail mccourt< and most of the MSM had it that she was the first on the scene, and headlined the story as such. Here are a few examples:
Revealed: Teenage girl was first to help Skripals after novichok poisoning
https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-teenage-girl-was-first-to-help-skripals-after-novichok-poisoning-11612909Revealed: Girl, 16, who was the first person to rush to help Sergei and Yulia Skripal after nerve agent poisoning
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6610945/Girl-16-person-rush-help-Skripals-nerve-agent-poisoning.htmlSchoolgirl, 16, was first to help Skripals after Novichok poisoning
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/schoolgirl-16-was-first-to-help-skripals-after-novichok-poisoning-a4043981.htmlTeenage girl was first on scene to help Salisbury Novichok poisoning victims
https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/20/teenage-girl-first-scene-help-salisbury-novichok-poisoning-victims-8366311/The following also came up in the list of results:
Army Colonel’s Daughter First Person To Help Skripals After Novichok Poisoning
https://www.forcesnews.com/news/army-colonels-daughter-first-person-help-skripals-after-novichok-poisoningSpeaking to Salisbury-based Spire FM, after winning the radio station’s Local Hero Award, Abigail said:
“It was my brother’s birthday and we were out celebrating…..”
Thing is that what she’s quoted as saying is taken from what she said to Spire-FM when receiving her award, and she says that:
“At this point, people were still walking past and I don’t think anyone had really noticed them”
Now she couldn’t possibly say that if there were already a couple of people with the Scripals already, as her mother maintains.
______________
@ Fortnite,
in response to what I said you said:
You are skeptical that Col McCourt says her husband told her its her duty to help. I don’t think it improbable at all.
My thinking was that a nurse – or a doctor – doesn’t need to be told to help anyone who appears to be unwell or sick and would automatically do so. And it doesn’t fit with the way her daughter related the way it happened anyway.
Fat Jon, thanks for the extra info.
In Brendan’s witness statement:
I said to the man ‘I’m really sorry’ at which the man said ‘I want the bill, I want the bill, I want the bill, there’s no time’ and tapped his watch as he said it. He seemed annoyed.I tried to explain but he did not seem to understand that we were waiving the bill. I could see that man was either ignoring what I said or did not understand me.
In Chloe’s witness statement:
I apologised to him for the wait and offered to prioritise the order, he said they didn’t want the food as they were in a hurry. He kept saying “I’m in a rush” and “Let me pay I want to pay” he kept insisting he would pay. The female said something to him in Russian and he stopped saying he would pay. I do not know what she said to him but after that he did not say he would pay again. I thanked him and walked away.
About ten minutes later they left the restaurant although I do not know which way they went when they left.If they did indeed need to be somewhere else in a hurry, why did they hang around for 10 minutes after Chloe told them they didn’t need to pay?
Re: ‘It is difficult to get a precise time of when the Skripals left Zizzis because the staff never mention it, but one person thought it to be about 15:30.’
According to the CCTV presented at the Inquiry, it was at 15:34, FJ. No reason to believe that’s not true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9OWCbI-Hvk (starts at 1:01:45)
The footage further shows that they sat down on the bench at 15:36. There’s no sign of any impairment in their gaits. So why would they sit down again in front of some shops just a couple minutes after they’d been seated for an hour and 15 minutes at Zizzi’s? I think they were waiting for someone.
Whilst the Inquiry seems perfectly content to present us with witness statements from bit-part players, such as the assistant manager at The Mill, it seems remarkably reticent to provide ones from people who claim to have actually seen the Skripals on the bench, such as Jamie Paine & Freya Church. It was Freya who told the Telegraph that Yulia had a red bag by her feet:
Was there anybody else in the immediate vicinity a short time before, who was sporting a big, red bag and might have been doing completely normal things like looking directly at CCTV cameras, for example?
I wonder why we’re not being treated to footage from the library’s CCTV from 15:48 to 15:55 on 4th March 2018.
(I’ll try to find time to comment on Dr Stephen Cockroft’s revelations sometime tomorrow. Enjoy what’s left of the weekend)
I just scrolled down the forcesnews article to finish reading it and it says the following:
Ms McCourt told the radio station she was “immensely proud” of her daughter.
“I just think she has been incredibly brave at the time to rush in. She’s trained in first aid and is in the cadet force at school, and she would never walk on by even if it was obvious it was dangerous,” she said.
It’s a bit like a rerun of the ‘heroic’ Nick Bailey who had no thought for his own safety and rushed to assist the Skripals (only it turns out he didn’t, and didn’t arrive on the scene until after they’d both been taken to hospital).
I was in Turkey many years ago and out wandering around (in Antalya) one day and we came across an elderly guy laying on the ground surrounded by people who had just collapsed a minute or two beforehand, and one of my Turkish friends was a junior doctor and he was straight in there to do whatever he could to help. The point is that there WAS no potential danger in my friend’s mind when he went to help (and there wasn’t of course) and obviously there is no way on this planet (in the real world) that anyone could describe Abigail as incredibly brave for going to help a couple of people who were unwell, as if to say she did so at some risk to herself.
Anyway, in one of the articles that came up when I did a search re “abigal mccourt”, it said that they both went to hospital at some point to get checked out, and (obviously) were found to be OK. Presumably this was a couple of days or so later. I can’t be bovvered to check through them all again to find it just now. But, prior to now, I’ve only ever come across articles in which it says that just Abigail went to the hospital to get checked over.
Fortnite, you say “If they did indeed need to be somewhere else in a hurry, why did they hang around for 10 minuttes after Chloe told them they didn’t need to pay?”
The simple explanation is that at first Sergei was assuming he was going to have to eat the food before leaving. Once he realised that he was not going to have to pay, or have anything other than the starter, then time was less of a priority.
Lapsed Agnostic, can you see a red bag in any of those CCTV clips? I can’t. This is the footage from which your still is taken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icyHxcfrgNQ who are certainly not the Skripals. Some people have suggested the woman might be Dawn Sturgess, but who knows?
Ah, I just found it (fortunately it was in the second article I checked out!):
The mum and daughter had to undergo hospital tests to make sure they weren’t contaminated with Novichok, before they were eventually given the all clear.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/salisbury-poisoning-teen-reveals-how-13886235
The Mirror – unlike some reports – omits to mention who Alison McCourt is exactly, and just keeps referring to her as Abigail’s mum, apart from later on in the article when it says ‘Proud Alison, said: “As a qualified nurse it was a fairly routine situation for me but my daughter was amazing….”.
And near the beginning of the article it says the following (which it said in other articles I’ve read):
In the months following the incident, Abby and her mum, Alison, wanted no press attention and kept their involvement in the globally-reported poisoning attack quiet.*
Which of course begs the question as to why her mother nominated her for the award which, if she won it (which she was pretty much bound to do given the enormity of the story) was bound to get wide coverage in the MSM (and elsewhere). I can’t get my head round that one. I mean if it was all staged and planned that Alison McCourt would arrive on the scene first so that she could… er, (thinks!) say to anyone else that came over (and this bit just occurred to me) that she’s rung 999 and an ambulance is on its way, because a ‘special’ ambulance was on standby to turn up shortly after she – Alison McCourt – notified them that the Movie is now in progress.
The point being that if it WAS all theatre and a black op to demonise and smear Putin/Russia, then why would AM (and the conspritors behind it all) let AM nominate her daughter and risk it getting into the MSM that the chief nurse of the British army just happened to be walking past etc when the Skripals suddenly took ill and became incapacitated? In a comment I read earlier (in a Moon of Alabama article) it was saying how it was all quite feasible that she and her daughter (and husband and son) just happened to be walking past at that point because it was a Sunday, and the shops close at 4.00pm on a Sunday etc, and that she/they live somewhere relatively close to Salisbury etc. Hmm, maybe THAT’s why Sergei was looking at his watch!
And didn’t someone post on here in the past few days that the reason Alison McCourt didn’t appear at the Inquiry in person is because she’s still recovering from being poisoned (and that this is what was said at the Inquiry)?!
*I just did a search re >alison mccourt< to see if I could find something to the effect that she didn’t attend the Inquiry in person because she is still suffering from the after affects of being poisoned (but haven’t so far), and came across the following in each of the three articles I read, quoting AM:
“To be clear, any decision and timings as to the withholding or release of mine and my daughter’s identity were not mine.”
Hmm, I wonder whose decision it was, and their reason why?! And presumably it was the same person/people who gave her the nod regards nominating her daughter……
Does this rabbit hole never end?!!
Oh My Gawd, I just came across this in a BBC News article:
Mr Murphy told the inquiry that this information helped detectives set the “time parameters of when the Novichok is likely to have been applied to that door as 6pm on the Saturday and 1.30pm on the Sunday, when (the Skripals) then left.”
And in each of the three articles I referred to a short while ago (and obviously citing from her statement) Alison McCourt says that the reason they went to Salisbury that day is because her kids wanted to go to Nandos, and says nothing about it being her son’s birthday, which is of course what Abigail said when receiving her award. The funny thing is that at some point in the last day or two (for some reason that escapes me now… or maybe it was just a hunch) I actually wondered if it really WAS her brother’s birthday that day, and thought to post on here if anyone knows a way to ascertain if it was, or not.
I mean if it WASN’T, the implications of THAT would be huge. And I mean really HUGE!
Anyway, this from the Independent:
Responding to the Russian Embassy document from March 2023 titled Salisbury: Five Years of Unanswered Questions, Ms McCourt said in a witness statement: “I confirmed that as at March 4 2018 I was employed as chief nurse of the British Army. I subsequently left the army in 2022.
“On Sunday, March 4 2018, I was off duty and in my own time, I had travelled to Salisbury with my family for a family day out.
“That particular destination for our trip had been chosen by my children – they had wanted to travel to Salisbury because it had a Nando’s.
“My preference had been to visit another town in the area, in a different restaurant, but I had given in to my children, so we ended up going to Salisbury.
Allan Howard,
The 9 Mar 2018 witness statement by Alison McCourt also states that both her and her daughter were tested for novichok:
“I got up the following morning, my left eye was red and swollen and my joints were itching, elbows, knuckles. I had my symptoms before I knew what was going on in Salisbury and before I knew that may be a nerve agent. I went to work as normal, my husband telephoned me and told me it had been declared a major incident. I then spoke to Wiltshire Police and was told to go to hospital, they took pulse and blood pressure and said red eye and itching were unrelated. My daughter also had red and itchy eyes. We have both had blood tests now which were negative.”
https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/INQ004476.pdf
In paragraph 14 of her 16 Oct 2024 witness statement, Alison says it was the police which suggested nominating Abigail for a bravery award, so Alison did so. She also explains it was the army and the police that advised (not instructed) her to not talk about the Skripal incident publically.
“14. With reference to my involvement in the Skripal incident at a time when I was Chief Nurse of the British Army, the Russian Embassy document states that, “There has been no attempt to explain why this extraordinary coincidence had been kept a secret for the previous ten months”. To be clear, any decision and timings as to the withholding or release of mine and my daughter’s identity were not mine. Immediately after the incident was advised by the police and the Army not to say anything publicly nor to respond to media enquiries: I followed that direction to the letter. Late in 2018 the police suggested that to reward her efforts my daughter should be entered for a bravery award. As advised, duly submitted a nomination for what I believed was a low profile local heroes’ award organised by a local radio station, not expecting that it would thereby expose my family and I to national media attention and resultant conspiracy theorists. My daughter won the award which was then syndicated to the national press. As a result I and my family were then subjected to an avalanche of unexpected and unwanted media attention. To this day we still receive unsolicited requests from TV production companies and individuals purporting to be conducting research requesting interviews. We have both always ignored or declined the approaches and will continue to do so.”
https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/INQ006137.pdf
Alison has been excused from giving oral evidence in at the inquiry by Lord Hughes due to “major detriment to her health as a result of her involvement in the March 2018 incident and the subsequent speculation about it, and, more, that attending to provide oral evidence would further aggravate her condition and occasion her real harm.”
All these documents are found on the inquiry website:
https://www.dawnsturgess.independent-inquiry.uk/Afterthought: I mean thinking about it, it was a DOUBLY amazing coincidence! The first being (if it was, that is) that it was AMs son’s birthday that day. And the second of course being that they just happened to be walking past the bench in The Maltings within a minute or two of the Skripals becoming ill and incapicitated (and just stopped breathing in Yulia’s case). Tripley amazing coincidence in fact – ie that the Skripals should just happen to sit on the bench there, and suddenly take ill and become unconscious/incapacitated when they did, and not several minutes later by which time the McCourt family would have already walked passed.
Fortnite
Thanks for the info. And thanks to Jon re the Daily Express article and the bit about Bailey administering CPR at the scene. And I just noticed (it’s impossible to remember everything posters say in the comments!) that Jon mentioned in his 19.02 post on Nov 2nd that:
If it was her brother’s birthday, her mother didn’t mention it in her statement.
And why wouldn’t you if that was the reason you were in Salisbury that day AND you know that your daughter said that it was when receiving her award and, that it was mentioned widely in the MSM at the time. I mean the odds on it being her son’s birthday that day are 365 to 1 against, but if it WAS, then maybe she was told by her minders to omit to mention it so as to set us conspiracy theory nutjobs off again!
I’d forgotten all about this bit, which I came across ages ago:
Neighbours at Sergei Skripal’s home in Salisbury say police arrived around 17:00 GMT on Sunday and have been there ever since.
And this is what it says in the wikipedia entry (which was widely reported at the time):
At 17:10, they were taken separately to Salisbury District Hospital by an ambulance and an air ambulance.
Well, to state the obvious, if the police arrived at his home at around 5.00pm, then it would appear that his name and address had already been determined (from one or more documents he had on him) prior to him/them being taken to the hospital.
From an interview with Andy Coulson (the former editor of the News of the World, NOT the Sun, as I said in an earlier post, at which point I couldn’t recall his name):
00:14:48.22 Nick Bailey:
Yeah, so it was a normal evening shift. I think it was a Sunday evening shift, I was just sat at my desk doing some normal work, as a detective sergeant and I heard this call on the radio about two people being unconscious or semi-conscious on a park bench in the city centre. That wasn’t necessarily something that CID would be involved in straight away but I am a bit of a nosey bugger and thought well that could be a whole number of things but I will at least go down and offer my support. You know, my uniformed colleagues were down there dealing with it and doing a brilliant job and I was never, my intention was never to go down and take over the scene because there might not have been anything to take over. It was just to go down and have a nosey around and just see if could help in any way. And it kind of went from there.
So yeah, went down to the scene, the two patients who we now know to be Sergei and Yulia Skripal had already gone. They’d been taken off by paramedics and there was certainly nothing at that point that kind of pointed at it to being a crime or a crime scene. So we kind of went back and we did some research back at the police station and started talking. And obviously by that point we were starting to get a little bit of information back from the hospital about how they were. And as I recall they were unconscious and they certainly weren’t very well at all. And the evening kind of just progressed.
There was a moment that I will never forget when we were talking to the Duty Inspector who came down, the force Duty Inspector came down to kind of oversee what was going on and we were talking to him about the different scenes. By this point we’d found Sergei’s car which was in a nearby carpark. So we had his car there, we had the bench which was the scene and we also had his address which we’d asked police officers to go and secure, or certainly just be there just in case we needed somebody to do anything at the scene. And we were talking about how we needed, really, to go into the house to see if there was anybody else in the house, there were any other medical emergencies, any other patients there and if there was any evidence there. If we could establish what had happened to these two people maybe it had happened at the house, we were just none the wiser. And I remember vividly deciding between us, you know as a collective decision that the best thing to do was to ask the neighbour who had a key, she had a spare key because she used to go in and help out or let the cat out…
Andy Coulson: Look after the cat, yeah.
Yeah, look after the cat, I think it was. And I remember vividly saying, ‘Right, well what we’ll do is we’ll ask the neighbour to go into the house and we will accompany the neighbour on the pretence that we’re…’ Make sure the house is secure because we didn’t know how long they were going to be in hospital for. ‘…And whilst we’re there we can just make sure there’s nothing untoward there.’ And that was the plan and we even radioed the police officer who was at the scene to say ‘This is the plan, go to the neighbour, let the neighbour go in, unlock the door and go into house.’ And literally two minutes later my colleague, who was sat at her computer, she called me over and said, ‘Serg, you’re gonna need to see this.’ And I just walked over and looked over her shoulder and she googled Sergei’s name and brought up newspaper articles. I can’t remember what the newspaper was but it was a picture of Sergei behind bars and it was basically saying that he was an ex-Russian spy why had been released as part of some kind of spy swap. And obviously at that point it became incredibly significant.
Right, so I got that bit wrong, and it was AFTER he got back from The Maltings, and NOT before he went down there (as I said in an earlier post), that a colleague at the police station googled Sergei Skripal’s name and, as such, discovered that he was a former Russian spy etc. But I was right of course – having read this interview some time ago – that by the time he arrived at The Maltings, the Skripals had been taken to hospital (and in the BBC documentary thing (fact-based drama) he didn’t go down to The Maltings until after the Skripals had been taken to hospital).
Nick Bailey on being poisoned, losing everything and finding peace
June 25, 2021. Series 4. Episode 25 (Crisis What Crisis?)PS As I said in a post a bit earlier, it’s impossible to remember EVERYTHING that posters say in their comments, but I just took the biscuit! A few seconds after I initially (and eventually) found the interview with Andy Coulson, I suddenly remembered that in my initial comment, when I started this thread, I included a very long segment from the interview, including all of the above, of course. Doh!
