30 October 2023 , 17:38
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A man who dressed up as the Manchester bomber for his Halloween outfit has sparked fury and been reported to the police.
David Wootton’s homemade costume featured an Arabic-style head-dress and a black rucksack with ‘Boom’ and ‘TNT’ written across in white. The 40-year-old also had a T-shirt with ‘I love Ariana Grande’ written on it in a reference to the deaths of 22 people at the singer’s concert in Manchester arena on May 22, 2017 when suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated a bomb.
Wootton posted a photo of him dressed up in the sick attire to Facebook, where he wrote: “Bet I get kicked out of the Halloween party.” Despite people on the social media site telling him to remove the photo, it stayed up and he later added: “Only went and won the best costume.”
The costume has caused so much offence that the police have been informed (Facebook)Now, Wootton’s former friends have said they have been in touch with the police to report the outfit as a hate crime. One told The Sun newspaper: “It makes me cry to think that someone would think this is remotely funny.” But Wootton himself has claimed the outfit is ‘not offensive’. He apologised and insisted he didn’t mean any harm as the costume was merely ‘adult fancy dress’.
The Manchester Arena attack, which saw the bomb go off in the foyer of the arena at 10:31pm, just as people were leaving, left nearly 1,000 people injured. Abedi was reportedly seen on his phone and smiling just before the bomb went off, and an inquiry heard that he detonated the bomb even after a steward at the arena raised concerns, but was unable to get through to the control room. Failings by security staff were described as ‘unacceptable and unjustified’.
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Hours after the needless loss of life happened, Ariana tweeted: “Broken. from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words.” She has since performed a charity gig in honour of the victims and has a tattoo to represent those who lost their lives.