Maurice Weaver, Daily Telegraph
On July 8 1996 a modern scourge visited St Luke’s School in Wolverhampton, England, when a madman ran amok. A teenage nursery assistant, Lisa Potts, was all that stood between a group of infants and their sure slaughter.
A nursery assistant who was badly injured trying to save children from a machete attacker relived the horror in court yesterday, swinging the blood-stained weapon over her head to show how he slashed his way into the kindergarten.
Lisa Potts, 20, who was still a teenager when Horrett Campbell struck at St Luke’s infants’ school in Blakenhall, Wolverhampton, on July 8, described the panic as he attacked during a teddy bears’ picnic in the playground. “He didn’t say anything at all,” she said.
“His teeth were gritted with anger, as if in a laugh. It was crazy. The children were hanging on to my skirt and some of them went underneath the skirt, they were so frightened. He just struck right down, going for my head and I put my arm up to protect.”
Campbell, 33, an unemployed welder, from Villiers Court, a block of flats overlooking the school, faces seven charges of attempted murder – four of adults and three of children. The prosecution at Stafford Crown Court alleges that he planned a massacre on the lines of those carried out at Dunblane by Thomas Hamilton and in Tasmania by Martin Bryant.
Police found two newspaper cuttings in his flat about Tasmania, the court heard. Richard Wakerley, prosecuting, said: “He told police that those murderers had been driven to indiscriminately kill others, just as he had been compelled to do what he did.” He felt an affinity for them, claiming that he, like them, was “misunderstood by society”. He also thought that the children at St Luke’s had once jeered at him.
While Hamilton and Bryant used guns, he did not have access to one. Two dismantled toy guns and drawings of gun parts were also found at his home.
Campbell, sitting in the dock between two warders, has expressed a readiness to admit six charges of inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent and one of attempted grievous bodily harm with intent. But the prosecution has rejected the offer, quoting evidence of lengthy premeditation of the crime, the “fearsome” nature of the weapon and his aiming at the victims’ heads as proof that his intention throughout was to kill.
Miss Potts, who has received awards for her heroism, received the most severe injuries of all as she tried to push the children, aged 3.5 to 4.5, to safety under a rain of blows from the machete’s 16in blade. She is still unfit to return to work.
Mr Wakerley said: “You may well be astonished by the courage of that young girl . . . but for her action this tragedy could have been so much worse.”
Miss Potts was asked if she felt able to demonstrate how Campbell made his attack. She put on plastic gloves, took the machete from a court usher and swung it high over her head in a downward chop. “It was like that,” she said. “They had great force.”
The judge, Mr Justice Sedley, asked: “They were overarm blows?” Miss Potts agreed: “They had great force.” The machete still carried various words inscribed by Campbell, including the phrase “you filthy devils”, and a swastika. Another inscription was “666 marks the Devil”.
During the attack Horrett carried a sports bag containing a Fairy Liquid bottle full of petrol. He wore a tweed deerstalker with two screws sticking out like horns and a black cross on the side.
Mr Wakerley told jury members that, even if they considered that Campbell had been mentally unbalanced at the time of the attack, he could still be found guilty of attempted murder.
Miss Potts described how Campbell had first hit two mothers who were waiting in the playground as the children prepared to go home. Then he turned on the children, slashing Francesca Quintaine, four, so violently that he sliced off her ear, tore open her face from ear to mouth and broke her jaw.
Miss Potts said: “I was clearing up and putting things into a basket and saw a man running from the corner of the fence. He went to attack one of the mums who was walking to collect her kid from the infants. He was carrying a machete. He came to the mum [Wendy Willington] and basically belted her over the head.
“She was lying on the floor and then I heard Miss Halles [Dorothy Halles, the nursery head teacher] say: “Quick, grab some of the children.” I started running with them. The man leapt over the fence and attacked one of the other mums, Surinder Chopra.
“He came again with it and went down on to her head. It was crazy from then on. Children were holding on to my skirt and some of them went underneath. They were hiding with fright.
“I started running with the children to try and get into the nursery door, but before I knew it the man came at me with the machete. As I started to run in, he lashed out at Francesca – straight across the face. Her face just opened.
“I was just running for the door and had two children under my arm. I got inside the nursery and dropped the children and as I went to shut the door his foot was in it and he was inside. I pushed one of the children into the dressing-up area behind the door and put my arms around the others as he attacked me again. He came again with the machete and started attacking my back. I think he hit me twice. I realised as I turned round that he was going for the little boy. The other children had run off to the outside door.
“He went for Ahmed [Malik] across the head. I went to pick him up and he cut my arm again. There was another blow to Ahmed on the arm as he fell to the floor. I couldn’t pick him up. I ran around the side of the water tray in the nursery and I then felt the blow on the head. That’s the one I felt the most.”
Despite being hit, she continued running. “I didn’t look back,” she said. It was only when the children were safe that she realised she was covered in blood. Miss Potts was sliced six times in all, including the blow to her head which chipped the skull.