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A British taxi driver is being hailed a hero after he locked a suspected terrorist in his car just seconds before a bomb exploded outside a Liverpool hospital.
The male suspect was the only person killed after his improvised explosive device detonated inside driver David Perry’s taxi outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Sunday, authorities said.
British police said Monday they were treating the blast as terrorist incident.
Surveillance footage obtained by The Sun showed Perry’s taxi pulling up outside the hospital’s entrance after he picked up the suspect about 10 minutes away.
The bomb exploded before the car had even come to a complete stop.
Seconds later, Perry can be seen fleeing from the driver’s side door as smoke and flames billowed from the vehicle.
Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson said Perry had managed to lock the doors of his taxi so the terror suspect couldn’t get out.
“The taxi driver, in his heroic efforts, has managed to divert what could have been an absolutely awful disaster at the hospital,” she told the BBC.
It wasn’t immediately clear when, or how, Perry became aware his passenger was carrying the bomb.
Authorities said early Monday they were still getting a full account from the taxi driver.
Perry was injured in the blast and was treated in hospital for burns and shrapnel injuries. The extent of his injuries wasn’t immediately known but the Associated Press reported he had already been discharged from the hospital.
Russ Jackson, the head of Counterterrorism Policing in northwest England, said they are still trying to determine a motive and if anyone else was involved in the attack.
Three men in their 20s were arrested elsewhere in the city under the Terrorism Act on Sunday, and a fourth was detained on Monday in relation to the attack.
None of the men, including the suspect who died in the blast, have been identified.
Investigators haven’t ruled out a link to remembrance events given the attack occurred just before 11 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday.
“Although the motivation for this incident is yet to be understood, given all the circumstances, it has been declared a terrorist incident,” Jackson said at a press briefing.
With Post wires
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