The mother of an 18-year-old Manchester bombing victim has recalled her anguish as she watched her daughter die.
Lesley Callander was on her way to collect Georgina from the Ariana Grande concert when Salman Abedi detonated his nail bomb, killing 22 in May.
The 54-year-old arrived to a scene of devastation, with sirens ringing, people screaming and bodies strewn across the lobby of the Manchester Arena.
Taken too soon: Georgina Callendar, left, pictured here with her idol Ariana Grande
Lesley Callander (pictured with husband Simon) was on her way to collect Georgina from the Ariana Grande concert when Salman Abedi detonated his nail bomb, killing 22 in May
She saw her daughter being attended to by medics on a makeshift stretcher and rushed over.
‘They were doing CPR and had the balloon over her mouth trying to keep her alive,’ she told the Daily Star Sunday.
‘I was talking to her. I was saying, “Please Georgina, please just try, it’s mummy, please try”.
Mrs Callander said she was holding her daughter’s hand and rubbing her leg in the ambulance to hospital.
When they got there she waited outside a threatre while medics tried to revive her.
Doctors don’t spend more than 25 minutes doing CPR. A nurse invited Mrs Callander in for the final two minutes where she held her daughter’s hand until they stopped.
Emergency services arrive close to the Manchester Arena on May 23
‘By this time I was hysterical,’ she said. ‘I cuddled her and held her hands. I was all alone with her and I didn’t know what to do. Then as I went out the curtains went black and I passed out.’
Moments later Georgina’s father Simon and brother Daniel arrived at the hospital.
Mr Callander said he wailed on the floor when he heard the news and then went home, drank ten cans of lager and wandered the streets for the rest of the night.
He said he didn’t leave his bedroom for two days.
In August Georgina’s family warned the Government to ‘open its eyes’ to the terror threat – or more parents could lose children.
In a statement released through Greater Manchester Police, her family said the teenager’s life had been cut short by ‘evil, evil men prepared to ruin lives and destroy families’.
It added: ‘I wish I could say that Georgina is one of the last to die in this way but unless our Government opens its eyes we know we are only another in a long line of parents on a list that continues to grow.’
Georgina’s mother Lesley Callander being supported by Rev David Dickinson, Rector of All Saints Hesketh Bank as she laid a yellow flower down in memory of her daughter at a vigil in the village of Tarleton, Lancashire
Miss Callander, from Chorley, was in her second year of studying health and social care at Runshaw College in Leyland, Lancashire.
She was ‘loving life’, having recently passed her driving test, was ‘doing great’ in her exams and had been accepted into Edge Hill University, the family said.
The family’s statement said: ‘Her life was taken away after 18 short years by evil, evil men prepared to ruin lives and destroy families, for what?
‘Georgina was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside, with a smile that was never ending.
‘She always had big hugs for everyone and her life was blooming like the flowers she loved.’
The family paid tribute to the ‘wonderful police and rescue services’ and thanked the public, saying the ‘hugs, love and kind words’ from the public had ‘a profound effect’ on them.
Lesley Callander found her daughter on a stretcher as paramedics fought to save her life in the aftermath of the explosion.
She described her desperate efforts to bring comfort to the teenager’s final moments to ITV news on Saturday.
‘I was just screaming and shouting at her. I was rubbing her hands, I was rubbing her tummy, I was rubbing her face,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what was running through her mind.
Nell Jones, who was one 22 people to have lost their lives when Salman Abedi blew himself up
‘It was just a flicker of hope that she’d move her hand or move her leg or try and open her eyes a little, just to acknowledge that I was there, just to let me know that she was very, very poorly but she knew that I was there.’
The young music fan previously met Grande and posted a picture of the pair together on social media.
‘She kept texting me telling me her tummy was turning over,’ her mother said. ‘She was so, so excited.’
Nell had been a pupil at the Holmes Chapel Comprehensive and Sixth Form in Cheshire, along with Freya.
In the statement released through GMP, Nell’s family said: ‘We can’t wrap our children in cotton wool. She was so excited to go to her first pop concert. She was singing in the car, all the way there.
‘Even though she has been taken from us we’ve had 14 lovely years with her and that makes us happy.
‘They were the best years. We were so lucky to have her.
‘Our hearts have been shattered. We loved Nell so very much, she was our world.’
The family of Georgina Callendar, pictured, has demanded more be done to tackle terrorism