‘Total chaos’: First responder remembers the 1999 Brixton nail bomb

On April 17, 1999, Neil Wheatley was working as a security guard at Brixton’s Ritzy cinema when a loud crunch broke through the air.

A home-made nail bomb, wrapped in sticky tape and concealed in a sports bag had been planted outside the Iceland supermarket.

Mr Wheatley, now 62, said: “I knew what the noise meant. They were attacking innocents.”

The bomb had been discovered by a market trader, George Jones.

Mr Jones used his mobile phone to call the police and tried to move the bag away from shoppers, but the device went off.

“I was blown across the road and a couple of nails lodged in my leg”, Mr Jones told the BBC at the time.

The bomb spat nails across the road at around 5.30pm, injuring 45 people including a one-year-old boy.

Mr Wheatley said: “I started administering first aid as soon as possible, along with a junior doctor who had been shopping nearby.

“Emergency services were told to hold off because of the threat of another explosion.

“It was total chaos. There was a police officer who was badly injured. People were trying to escape and other people were injured so we were just working our way through.”

The bomb had smashed windows from surrounding buildings, with fragments of glass spread across the scene. A report from St Thomas’ Hospital likened the injuries to those seen in war zones.

 

Mr Wheatley said: “We assessed if people were screaming, that meant they were alive. If they’re not screaming it’s a priority case.

“If they couldn’t move we were getting them up on our shoulders and carrying them out to the fire station round the corner. We handed them over and they were taken to hospital.

“All of a sudden there was another bang and everything went quiet. But it was thunder, and it started to rain.

“Then paramedics started coming in. It was all over in a few hours.”

Scotland Yard said there was no warning given before the blast . A police helicopter and explosives officers were called to the scene, which was sealed off as forensic experts trawled the site for clues.

Initially, Mr Wheatley believed the bomb had been planted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Throughout the 1990s the IRA had run a bloody campaign in the capital, hitting the London Stock Exchange, the Baltic Exchange, the Bishopsgate, and the Docklands with explosives which resulted in numerous fatalities, casualties and extensive damage.

Mr Wheatley said: “Terror was hitting London in different places before peace talks had taken place. 

“But I remember there wasn’t any smoke. So I knew it was different.”

Brixton has a high concentration of ethnic minority residents and is known as a centre of black culture in London.

A week after the Brixton blast another bomb went off in Brick Lane in London’s East End – an area with a high Asian population. Seven people were left injured.

But on April 30, 1999, a nail bomb was placed in the Admiral Duncan Pub, in Old Compton Street, Soho.

The explosion targeted members of London’s LGBTQ+ community. Four people including a pregnant woman and her baby were killed and 79 were injured in the blast. 

The attacks proved to be the work of right-wing extremist David Copeland, 22, who was captured shortly after his final pub bombing. 

In June 2000, Copeland – a self-confessed homophobic Nazi who hoped to “set fire to the country and stir up a racial war” – was given six life sentences, with a minimum of 50 years in prison.

Pictured top: Neil Wheatley (right) and a junior doctor tend to a casualty at the scene of the Brixton nail bomb in 1999 (Picture: Reuters/ Alamy)