Inside the Park Square siege

Monday evening: Finlay Peers is idly scrolling through YouTube videos in a fourth floor flat in the Gateway building on Park Square. Finlay, 28, is studying for a masters in game art and design, so Destiny lore videos on YouTube constitute both entertainment and research. Finlay’s fiancée Evie, an apprentice engineer with Network Rail, is in bed, sick; she’s been feeling ill for days. Boredom and illness: a very normal weekday evening in February.

At about 7.30pm, an insistent banging at the door snaps him out of his torpor. Probably just an overexcited door-to-door charity salesman or a lost takeaway delivery driver, he thinks. But through the peephole he’s shocked to see a police officer standing in the corridor. 

“My first thought was ‘crap, what have I done’,” he says. Opening the door, a harassed-looking female officer tells him everyone has to leave the building straight away. What about the cats: Lunar and Umbrion? There’s no time for that. “She told us we had to leave now,” he says. “Right now.”

Hastily walking out of their front door and down the stairwell, they pass at least a dozen heavily armed officers. Stationed in every doorway, they’re dressed in black combat gear with helmets, head-mounted cameras, and massive Heckler & Koch assault weapons strapped to each of their bodies. There were no smiles of reassurance as they passed. “It was absolutely terrifying,” says Finlay.

The couple are shepherded out of a back exit and onto the street. “We get out of the building and it’s just blue, the entire street is just blue,” Finlay recalls. Looking around he counts at least four police cars, five ambulances and a fire engine. More will follow in the next few minutes.