PCs Lydia Ward and Ellie Cook were brutally attacked by 21-year-old Mohammed Fahir Amaaz while responding to an incident at Manchester airport – he has now been jailed for three-and-a-half years
PC Lydia Ward said she needed an operation to fix her nose after the attack
A policewoman who was left bloodied after being brutally assaulted by a man at Manchester Airport has told how he ‘looked directly into her eyes’ seconds before launching into the horror attack.
Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 21, from Rochdale was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail on Friday over the incident, which sparked huge debate on social media after footage was shared widely online.
PCs Lydia Ward and Ellie Cook were responding to reports of headbutt in Terminal 2 on the evening of July 23 2024, when they were assaulted by Amaaz. He resisted arrest before swinging punches at the two women, leaving PC Ward with a broken nose and concussion and causing PC Cook, a firearms officer, to suffer an injured jaw.
The two officers, who have both been at Greater Manchester Police for eight years, described how Amaaz’s actions had affected their careers and day-to-day lives in victim impact statements read before court.
PC Ward said: “We were totally blindsided, and I felt like it came from nowhere. I genuinely thought you would have agreed to come outside for a conversation about what you had done in Starbucks. There were no indications. I never in a million years thought you would have attacked me the way you did. I’m still so confused about it all. It replays in my mind constantly.
“In the moments before you punched me, I remember you looked directly into my eyes. Could you see how scared I was? I was petrified. I just remember hitting the floor and thinking ‘this is it’. I felt instant pain and then I saw the blood. I didn’t know what was going on.”
She revealed that she had since needed an operation to fix her nose and was left with a “small scar” from the attack, adding: “Every time I look in the mirror, I am forever reminded of what you did to me. This will be a trigger for the rest of my life.”
PC Cook meanwhile told how her “vision went black” after she was punched and knocked to the ground, and that she managed to deploy her taser after witnessing PC Ward being attacked.
She asked her attacker: “What would you have done if I hadn’t? When would you have stopped? You wanted to take each of us out and I fear you would have gone to extreme lengths to do that. Why?”
PC Cook shared that she had stood down from firearms duties since the incident, telling Amaaz: “You have ripped that from me. I hope you never forget, because I know I won’t.”
