Dunblane massacare survivor says killer hasn't ruined her life

One of the injured survivors of the Dunblane Primary School class massacred 20 years ago said she had been determined not to let it ruin her life.

Survivors and relatives of victims are still haunted by the attack. Picture: BBC

Aimie Adam, in her first interview yesterday since 16 of her classmates were shot dead, also said she was glad to remember little about it.

Ms Adam, 25, still has a slight limp from being shot twice in the gun attack when she was five, which left her in a wheelchair for years.

Thomas Hamilton opened fire on the primary one class during a PE lesson in the school gym on 13 March 1996, also killing their teacher, Gwen Mayor, before turning the gun on himself.

Ms Adam, who is studying mental health nursing at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, recalled: “Everyone was chatting and laughing and I was running around – and then I’m not sure what happened.

“I was on the floor and my PE teacher Mrs Harrild was on the ground beside me and she realised I had been injured.

“She told me to crawl into the gym cupboard. I don’t remember, but I must have made it.

“Nursery teachers were running in and shouting for paper towels, then I must have lost consciousness. You’d think you’d remember something so dramatic but I can’t. It’s probably a good thing. I don’t remember feeling any pain. There was a weird metallic taste in my mouth and a fuzzy tingly feeling all over my body and I knew everything was not right in my leg.”

One bullet had hit her right buttock and a second shattered her right thigh. It entered at the top of her hip and lodged at the base of her spine.

Ms Adam was treated in the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow for three weeks, and was the last survivor to leave hospital.

The student said she still sometimes felt guilty for having survived, adding: “It is 20 years and I am still living with the devastation of it.

“Nobody got to choose that day.”

Of Hamilton, she said: “He’s in the right place. He cannot ruin my life any more. I definitely haven’t let him.

Ambulance official John McEwan, 69, who co-ordinated the response to the attack, said yesterday he was still haunted by the shootings. He said: “Even those in control rooms were terribly distressed and those who weren’t there felt guilty.”