Woman tells inquiry of moment her foot was blown off by Omagh bomb

A woman who suffered horrific injuries in the Omagh bombing has told of the moment she realised the blast had severed her left foot.

Suzanne Travis told the Omagh Bombing Inquiry that shrapnel embedded in her leg from the 1998 Real IRA explosion will finally be removed later this month.

Ms Travis told the inquiry that not a day has passed since then when she is not in pain and said she would never forgive those responsible for leaving the bomb in the Co Tyrone town.

She was a 20-year-old teaching student at Liverpool in 1998, but had a summer job as a childminder back home in Omagh during the summer holidays.

She had travelled with her mother into the town centre to buy her plane ticket back to Liverpool on the day of the bombing.

Their lunch was interrupted when they were moved towards the bottom of Market Street due to a bomb alert.

Ms Travis said her mother had suggested the two of them leave the area to go to the Dunnes shop, but she had said they should stay.

She said: “That was the last thing she said to me, because it exploded after that.

“I remember as soon as it did explode, the first thought in my head was ‘Oh no, it’s a bomb, we should have moved’.”

She added: “It is horrifying to recall the mayhem and carnage after the bomb. I never lost consciousness at this stage.

“The sights and sounds remain as raw today as they were on the day of the bomb.

“When it did go off it was like a dull bang. I think that is because it was so loud my hearing was affected.

“I just remember my entire body feeling pressure. My face felt like it was being squashed.

“I remember being flung onto my back.”

Ms Travis said her face was covered in rubble and she could not see properly due to blood from a cut on her head.

She told the inquiry that two dead bodies were beside her, and she feared at first that one of them was her mother.

She said: “I was sat up and I just remember the carnage that was around me.

“I saw the person who was beside me and the person next to them as well, whose injuries I will never forget.”

Ms Travis said she finally saw her mother in the middle of the road.

She said: “She must have been blown into the air when the bomb exploded and she had landed at that point in the street.”

Ms Travis said she called out to a friend who ran to get help.

She added: “It was at that point when she ran away and I looked down and my two legs were in front of me and I realised I didn’t have my left foot.

“It had been completely blown off.”

Ms Travis said a stranger brought her by car to Omagh hospital. She was then transferred by ambulance to Altnagelvin Hospital in Londonderry alongside another victim who later died.

She told the inquiry that as her mother and father were not at the hospital, she had to give consent for her own leg to be amputated below the knee.

She said: “I remember the word amputation. I remember them giving me the pen and clipboard and I remember scribbling on it.”

She said her brother arrived at the hospital to see her, but had to run out of the cubicle to vomit when he saw her injuries.

The following day she was told her mother had survived and was in the same hospital in a coma, the inquiry heard.

Ms Travis said that when her mother woke from a coma she was wheeled to see her.

She said: “I said ‘I was sorry, we should have gone to Dunnes when you said’.

“She was so badly injured and she just said ‘it is not your fault’.”

Ms Travis said she underwent a number of surgeries and was fitted with a prosthetic leg.

She said: “I was only 20 and life as I knew it had disappeared.”

She returned to university the following year and graduated as a teacher in 2001.

She applied for a job at a school in Liverpool and has worked there ever since. She told the inquiry she is married and has two daughters.

However, she said the constant pain from her injuries has meant she has had to reduce her working days over recent years.

She said: “The consultant who I have in England realised that the leg infections were becoming more frequent due to there being shrapnel pieces in my leg so I am having those removed at the end of this month.”

Ms Travis concluded: “Twenty-six years have passed since that terrible day and I have now lived much longer with my injuries than without them.

“Not a day goes by where I am not in pain or uncomfortable. Every morning I face the grim reality of having to put on a prosthetic limb just to be able to get out of bed and begin my day.

“Little did I know that a lovely sunny day in Omagh all those years ago would turn into the worst day of our lives and would result in my mother and I living with life-long disabilities.

“The men who carried out this atrocity drove away that day and left behind carnage, devastation and suffering. They didn’t care.

“They ruined many, many lives, mine included, and for what?

“I will never forgive them for the cowardly, wicked act that took so much away from my family.”