Christopher Reid, managing director of Security Search Management and Solutions Ltd., says “the mistake is entirely mine” and that “to say I’m sorry doesn’t seem adequate enough”.
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Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward said yesterday that the item had been signed as returned before the sub-contractors left the stadium and because the device was non-explosive it could not have been detected by sniffer dogs during their routine sweep of the ground.
United took no chances when a mobile-phone device, taped inside a bathroom cubicle in a corner of Old Trafford, was discovered by a member of staff shortly before the Premier League match against Bournemouth on Sunday.
Reid said he mistakenly thought all the training devices had been collected after the session, because he had a similar mockup of a pipe bomb in his bag.
Fans of Bournemouth, a club from the south coast of England, face a 500-mile (800-kilometer) round trip for the second time in three days to attend the rescheduled match.
The ground was evacuated and bomb disposal experts called in to conduct a controlled explosion.
Fans of both clubs behaved impeccably and the evacuation – the first of its type in the United Kingdom – was a complete success.
A Kent-based security company has been revealed as one of two businesses involved in the fake bomb fiasco at Old Trafford which caused Manchester United’s match against Bournemouth to be abandoned. Overall, I’m proud of how our staff responded.
“Once a live situation was identified, the Club and police had no option but to treat the matter as a potential terror threat; we could not have assumed it was a training exercise error”, he said.
United confirmed they would offer ticket refunds or reprinting for the match, which has been rearranged. You know, the game being postponed (we will finally play on Tuesday) after a suspect package -that we were told could be an explosive- was found in the stadium.
“We will investigate the incident to inform future actions and decisions”.
“With regard to your point about the incident itself, we are conducting a detailed evaluation with the help of the police and will share our findings across the rest of the game”.
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Lloyd, who has called for an inquiry, said the club needed to provide some answers.
