Hillsborough: Dad's Battle To Save His Girls

A father who lost two daughters in the Hillsborough disaster has told their inquests how he desperately battled to save their lives after finding them lying together on the football pitch.

Trevor Hicks had become separated from his "football mad" 15-year-old Vicki and his 19-year-old Sarah, as they watched the 1989 match from different parts of the ground.

He said he nevertheless had a clear view of the area where the teenagers were standing and remembers seeing the overcrowding around them.

"It was clear that there were extreme circumstances in the pen ... I knew they were roughly there... you could see that there were clearly people in extreme distress," he told the inquests' jury.

Mr Hicks, whose wife Jenni was also at the match, said he made his way to the Leppings Lane End terraces where his daughters had been standing.

He recalled seeing the "limp form" of his youngest daughter being passed over a fence after the surge, and described how his children ended up lying together on the pitch as he and others tried to resuscitate them.

"It was a case of swapping between the two girls, sorting out who was doing mouth-to-mouth and who was doing the heart compressions," he said.

"I was shouting my daughters' names into their ears, calling out for help.

"I have always been taught that one of the last things that go is the hearing, so I was calling their names in the hope they'd know we were there."

He added: "One of the burning memories I have got was a young boy of about 15 in a St John Ambulance uniform.

"The poor lad was in a worse state than me."

The inquests heard how Vicki was carried "literally in our arms" by Mr Hicks and a bystander into an ambulance as soon as it arrived on the pitch.

But as there was no room for his elder daughter to be taken at the same time, he had "no choice" but to trust she would be placed in the next ambulance. Mr Hicks said he "felt dreadful" as he left her behind.

"It was chaos, basically everybody was looking after their casualty, or in my case, casualties," the inquests heard.

Once Mr Hicks had been told that his youngest daughter had died at Northern General Hospital, he explained how his "immediate attention switched back to Sarah".

Mr Hicks, who has been a prominent campaigner on behalf of Hillsborough families for 26 years, had earlier described his daughter Sarah as a "straight A student", while Vicki had been "determined to be a sports writer".

They were among the 96 fans who died in the tragedy on 15 April 1989.

Inquests are currently being held in Warrington after the original inquest verdicts of accidental death were quashed in 2012.