Rugby woman's eyewitness account of Berlin attack

A lorry ploughed into a Christmas market near the centre of Berlin, reportedly killing 12 people and injuring 48. As the Advertiser went to press, German police were investigating the incident as a “probable terrorist attack”.

Emma Rushton, a journalist from Rugby, was visiting the Christmas market and witnessed the tragedy unfold.

She said: “We were sat behind one of the booths where we had bought the Gluhwein from. We were just looking around looking at the lights, listening to the music, really enjoying the festivities. When all of a sudden to the left of us there was an almighty bang or crash and we thought maybe fireworks were being set off.

“Then the lights that were overhanging the market started to be pulled down and we saw the articulated lorry coming towards where we were sat. It went from our left to our right about eight to 10ft in front of us.

“It completely decimated the place where we bought the Gluhwein from. Completely crushed it. People luckily were all pulled out of there, injured but no fatalities.

“It was going maybe 40mph and showed no signs of stopping and we were in the square and the two main roads either side of the square but nothing that would have led to it maybe veering off the road and into the market. This went straight through the middle of the market.

“We didn’t know what to do my whole body went numb the first thing i did was pull out my phone to call my mother to make sure she knew i was safe. We didn’t know whether we should stay there, whether we were safe there whether something else might happen.”

Thinking of safety Emma decided it was best that they headed back to their hotel.

She said: “We walked past the carnage that it was. There’s wood panels everywhere, glass everywhere and we walked through casualties; people holding their heads bleeding, pools of blood, people in the recovery position. We wanted to stop and help but there is the language barrier and we just thought we wanted to be somewhere safe.”

Despite what happened Emma is going to do her best to carry on with what she originally intended to do in Berlin.

Emma said: “We are still pretty shaken up but we are going to carry on, we are going to do exactly what we intended to do.

“Our thoughts and our prayers are with people who have been affected by this, people who have lost their lives and friends and family of those people but if this was deliberate, if it was terrorism, what they want to do is they want you to change your way of life, they want you to change what you are doing so we think the best way of making sure that they do not win is to carry on and do exactly what we were going to.”