As the fallout from the deadly terror attack in Barcelona continues, a British tourist has given a heartbreaking interview about the last moments of a dying boy he believes was 7-year-old Australian Julian Cadman, who was yesterday confirmed as one of the victims.
Harry Athwal told Good Morning Britain he ran from the restaurant where he was eating after watching the speeding van send pedestrians “flying into the air”, desperate to see if he could assist in some way.
He ran straight into the body of a young boy he says looked to be about seven or eight, immediately stopping on Las Ramblas to tend to him as frantic policeman shouted at him in Spanish to vacate the area.
The moment I saw that child I knew what I had to do. I had to go to that child and I was so focused on it and I just sat with him and the first policeman got to me, he shouted to me in Spanish, I shouted back ‘I need an ambulance, I need an ambulance’. He was shouting at me to get up and move is what he is saying. I said ‘No, I’m not moving I’m not leaving this child’ and I wasn’t going to leave him for anybody.
Athwal – a father himself – says he “sat there stroking his hair. I was crying, I was in tears, I was scared.”
His sole focus was to protect the boy from further harm, fearing a second terror attack.
You know nobody is going to come back, these cowards will not come back and run over him. Whether he’s dead or alive, it’s not going to happen. If I have to pick him up, I’ll pick him up. I didn’t want to move him, I wanted to comfort him, but if something were to happen I would have picked him up and I was going to get him out the way because I’d be damned if someone was going to hurt him.
Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, killed 13 people when he ploughed a van into pedestrians in the busy tourist hub; he would later kill another man in a car hijacking as he tried to flee the area.
The 15th victim was killed in a separate attack by suspected Islamist militants hours later in a seaside resort in Cambrils.
