Manchester attack: woman buys tickets home for Scots teens

A woman from a village in South Lanarkshire has gone viral after praising a Good Samaritan who helped her daughter return home from the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert on Monday night.

Swarms of emergency services at Manchesters MEN Arena and Piccadilly Station after an explosion

Karen Lamplugh, who lives in Holytown near Motherwell, took to Facebook to try and track down the woman who aided her daughter Nicola and her pal Chelsea Aitchison after the blast which killed 22 people.

Karen revealed that a then unknown woman, who had escaped injury after the explosion, had given the two young women her train tickets back to Glasgow so they could get home.

The generous mum said her husband had decided to drive from Glasgow to Manchester to pick her and her daughters up after seeing the aftermath of the explosion.

The single tickets would have been enough to take Nicola and Chelsea back to Glasgow, though it is not known if they had other transport or accommodation lined up following the gig.

Karen’s original post was shared nearly 5,000 times as she sought to track down the woman to thank her for her kind gesture.

Harnessing the ‘power of Facebook’ Karen was able to track down the mum of two, who she named as Joanna Forrester.

Karen wrote: “I would like to thank her so much for her act of kindness, it restores my faith in humanity when things like this happen and also to the kind people of Manchester who help everyone involved.”

The concert at Manchester Arena, which is the largest indoor arena in Europe with a capacity of around 21,000, was a sell-out.

Police have identified 23-year-old Salman Abedi as the bomber, and have also arrested a number of people in connection with the attack.