A police officer who was punched in the face while trying to arrest two brothers at Manchester Airport has told jurors she was ‘absolutely terrified’ during the alleged attack.
PC Lydia Ward said she had ‘never experienced that level of violence’ after her nose was broken during the incident involving Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, and Muhammad Amaad, 26, in Terminal 2 last July.
She and two colleagues from Greater Manchester Police had approached Amaaz at a ticket machine after a report that a male fitting his description had headbutted a customer at the Starbucks in arrivals.
Amaaz allegedly resisted, and his brother, Amaad, is then said to have intervened, with the court told they inflicted a ‘high level of violence’ on the officers.
Adam Birkby, for the prosecution, earlier suggested Amaaz threw 10 punches, including one which floored PC Ward, and that Amaad aimed six punches at firearms officer PC Zachary Marsden.
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Amaaz is also said to have kicked PC Marsden and twice struck firearms officer PC Ellie Cook with his elbow.
Giving evidence on Thursday at Liverpool Crown Court, PC Ward described trying to ‘grab [Amaaz] off so he could stop kicking PC Marsden’.
She said: ‘All I remember then is that he turned and he punched me straight in the face.
‘I can’t really remember where it landed but I know where my injuries were. I remember falling on the floor and everything went black.’
She told prosecutor Adam Birkby that the blow delivered was ‘really forceful’.
PC Ward, a former special constable with Lancashire Police who joined GMP in 2018, said: ‘Never in my whole time in the police service had that level of violence been used on me before. It felt really hard.
‘As I came round, all I could feel was blood pouring out of my nose. I was just thinking he has done something to my nose, face area, I didn’t know what has happened.’
Mr Birkby said: ‘How did you feel when you came round?’
PC Ward replied: ‘I was terrified to be honest. I was absolutely terrified. I had never experienced that level of violence towards me in my life.
‘I didn’t know who was going to come up at me next. I was scared of going after this male again and being punched in the face again.’
She said at one point she pressed her police radio emergency button to call for further assistance, but the impact of the punch had knocked the battery out.
She told Mr Birkby that other people in the pay station area were ‘shouting stuff’ and ‘filming on their mobile phones’, adding: ‘Nobody came to assist. I felt everyone in that room was against us.
‘To be honest, I was terrified.’
PC Ward, who described herself as ‘petite’ and weighing eight stone, said she deployed her Pava incapacitant spray against two men who approached Mr Amaaz when he was on the floor after a Taser had been discharged on him.
She said: ‘They just kept coming forward, trying to impede. I was telling them to go back and they were not listening.’
Rosemary Fernandes, representing Amaaz, put it to PC Ward that her client was ‘taken by surprise’ at the ticket machine and was ‘shocked’.
She said: ‘It is important you identify yourselves as police officers, isn’t it?’
PC Ward said: ‘I don’t think we had any time to do that. We didn’t have any time for rational discussion with this male as it turned violently quickly.’
Ms Fernandes said: ‘I put it to you that the defendant believed he was being attacked from behind and it all happened extremely fast.
‘It is the defence’s case that he punched you in lawful self-defence on the basis that you were an assailant. Do you have any comment on that?’
PC Ward said: ‘I don’t know how he felt I was an assailant. He turned towards me and punched me in the face.
‘He could see I was a police officer, and he could see I was a female as well.’
Footage from a body worn video camera of a female police colleague was played to the jury which showed a bloodied and crying PC Ward being comforted in the aftermath of the incident.
Amaaz is alleged to have assaulted PC Marsden and PC Ward, causing them actual bodily harm.
He is also accused of the assault of PC Cook and the earlier Starbucks assault of Abdulkareem Ismaeil.
Amaad is alleged to have assaulted PC Marsden, causing actual bodily harm.
Both men, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, deny the allegations.
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