Hero who stopped hospital bombing says he acted on ‘pure instinct’

A hospital patient who talked a lone-wolf terrorist out of bombing a maternity wing has said he was just in the ‘right place at the right time’.

Nathan Newby stopped the would-be atrocity through an act of kindness towards Mohammad Farooq, ahead of receiving the George Medal for bravery later today.

Farooq was jailed last year for life with a minimum term of 37 years after taking a home-made pressure cooker bomb into St James’s Hospital in Leeds, intending to ‘kill as many nurses as possible’.

Today, hero Mr Newby will receive the George Medal, the second-highest civilian gallantry award, for his lifesaving actions.

Mr Newby, 35, from Leeds, said he thought Farooq was ‘probably a nice guy’ who was going through bad things at the time, and said he saw himself as someone who was ‘just in the right place at the right time’.

A trial heard Farooq had become a ‘self-radicalised lone-wolf terrorist’, who chose the hospital as a target as he had been a clinical support worker there and had a long-running grievance with nurses on his ward.

Mr Newby, who was a patient at the hospital on the night Farooq planned to carry out the bombing, had gone outside for a vape when he saw Farooq.

‘I just went over to see if he was alright, to see if I could make him feel better. I said: ‘How are you, pal? Are you alright?’ and it just went from there really,’ Mr Newby said.

He said Farooq eventually told him he was there ‘for some sort of revenge,’ and told Mr Newby that he had a bomb about an hour into the conversation.

‘He was constantly watching (his bag), it was about seven feet away from us, and every nurse that walked past it, he was looking at them, looking at the bag,’ Mr Newby added.

‘And then I asked him what was in it… and then he just came out with it. He just said it’s a bomb. I could hear it in his voice, it wasn’t a joke, or owt like that.’

Farooq then showed him the bomb, which Mr Newby said scared him, but he aimed to move Farooq away from the building.

‘I wasn’t going to shout and things like that because it would have been nervous for others and just cause havoc, so I just thought, the best way is to keep quiet and just get him out of the way and be tactical about it,’ he added.

‘I thought, ‘If it goes off, it’s just going to be him and me, and I want to make sure it’s just me and him and not anyone else.”

He managed to move Farooq towards some benches further away from the maternity ward, something he called ‘pure instinct’.

Mr Newby said the pair chatted over several hours, with Farooq telling him about his family and children.

‘He asked for a cuddle a few times, and I said yeah, of course you can,’ Mr Newby added. ‘I don’t judge anybody. Everybody’s different and unique in their own ways, aren’t they? I didn’t judge him.’

Farooq later asked Mr Newby for a hug and called him a ‘top guy’, before telling him to ring the police before he ‘changed his mind’.

Mr Newby said the enormity of what had happened did not hit him until he was sitting in the back of a police van after armed officers arrived and detained Farooq.

During the phone call to the police, Mr Newby told them Farooq seemed like a nice guy deep down.

Asked how he felt about him now, he said, ‘He probably is a nice guy. It was just that his head was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

‘I would say he was just going through bad things at the time, and when you’re in that situation, your mind’s capable of doing all sorts of things that you don’t expect.’

Mr Newby said he did not think of himself as a hero, but as someone who was ‘just in the right place at the right time’.

He said, ‘I only think about that night (now) if someone brings it up. And then it’s like, it’s crazy how it could have gone….

‘I was a patient at the time, so I wouldn’t be here, because I was at the front of the building, so it would have taken me out.’

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