A woman was arrested in Blackley, Manchester, Wednesday evening in connection with Monday’s suicide bombing at Manchester Arena. She was taken into custody following a late-night armed raid on a block of flats north of the city, Manchester police said.
Via The Independent:
A “huge bang” was heard as police raided the flats on Wednesday and witnesses described seeing special forces officers swoop on the address.
Residents said they heard what sounded like an explosion and saw a “huge police presence.”
Resident Alex Finnie described seeing a woman with dark hair and wearing a blue shirt with her hands cuffed behind her back pressed up against a window.
He said: “When the bang went I heard screaming and shouting and then they took the woman out.
“She was facing this way out the window and a couple of minutes later two armed police took her away.
“After the first one I heard loud banging on another door but on the same floor.”
The woman was driven away in a police van, he said, adding that armed police were preventing residents from accessing the twelfth floor.
Greater Manchester Police said: “This evening searches have been carried out in Blackley. These searches are connected to Monday’s horrific attack. A woman has been arrested at an address in connection with the investigation.”
Seven people have now been arrested in connection with the investigation of Monday’s attack at the Ariana Grande concert.
There is no word yet on the alleged accomplice’s role in the bomb plot, but there is reason to suspect that she was present in the Manchester Arena Tuesday night.
As PJ Media reported on Tuesday, an eyewitness told Sky News that she had noticed a suspicious woman sitting by herself, “smirking” and “fidgeting” with her backpack during the concert. Dawn Waddy said that she and her daughter — who was “upset” by the woman’s odd behavior — reported the woman to security personnel and were rebuffed.
Waddy went on to tell the Sky News reporter that she didn’t think security took her seriously because of how they treated her daughter after she also got up and complained about the woman.
“My daughter… had gotten upset about things and she went to security and they basically told her, ‘How would you like it if someone accused you of this?’ Nothing was done about it.”
Waddy and other concert-goers also complained to reporters that no security checks were carried out as they entered the venue.
It remains to be seen whether the woman arrested in Manchester is the same woman Waddy and her daughter reported to security. But if she turns out to be one and the same, twenty-two people, including an eight-year-old girl, may have been blown to pieces and scores of others maimed because security personnel felt a greater need to be politically correct than to protect the public.
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