A security guard working in the Manchester Arena the night it was bombed in 2017 said he didn’t approach the bomber out of fear of being “branded a racist.”
“I was scared of being wrong and being branded a ‘racist’ — if I got it wrong, I would have got into trouble. It made me hesitant on what to do by overreacting or judging someone by their race,” Kyle Lawler, who was 18 at the time of the attack, told officials investigating the bombing.
A person had reported Salman Abedi, who was born in Manchester to Libyan-born refugees, to security. Lawler and another security guard saw him just minutes before he detonated the bomb, which was packed with nuts and bolts.
“I just had a bad feeling about him but did not have anything to justify that,” Lawler said of Abedi, who was dressed in all black and was “fidgety and sweating.”
He tried to contact the security control room but could not get through due to traffic.
“I felt unsure about what to do,” he said.
“It’s very difficult to define a terrorist. For all I knew, he might well be an innocent Asian male,” Lawler said. “I did not want people to think I am stereotyping him because of his race.”
“I wanted to get it right and not mess it up by overreacting or judging someone by their race.”
A total of 22 people, including children, were killed by the blast on May 22, 2017, during an Ariana Grande concert. Abedi also died when he detonated the bomb.
