A FORMER East Lancashire hospital consultant has spoken of his shock and horror after tending the innocent victims of the Dunblane School massacre.

Dr Howard Gibson and his nurse wife Elaine lived in West View, Belthorn, before recently moving to Scotland.

Dr Gibson, who worked at Burnley General Hospital as well as Blackburn Royal Infirmary and Queens Park Hospital, was the medical officer in charge of the special emergency operation at Falkirk Royal Infirmary set up in the wake of the tragedy.

The hospital took in three child casualties and an adult. One of the victims was a boy, believed to be five-year-old Andrew O'Donell, who had gunshot wounds to the leg.

Still trying to come to terms with the events of yesterday, Dr Gibson told the Lancashire Evening Telegraph: "Like everyone else we are all shocked and stunned because it's such a terrible thing to have happened.

"The school is reasonably nearby so there would be people at the hospital who knew the children."

Falkirk took some of the less seriously injured children after most of the victims had gone to Sterling.

"I was the consultant physician on call so I became the medical co-ordinator," said Dr Gibson.

"They set up an incident room in Sterling and I liaised with them." Dr Gibson's wife Elaine, a former sister at Blackburn Royal Infirmary, shared the sentiments of many living near Dunblane who still cannot believe what has happened.

"Everybody is completely stunned," she said. "It's terrible."

The couple live about ten miles away from Dunblane in the village of Glen Devon and were today thanking God that none of their children went to the school chosen for destruction by madman Thomas Hamilton.

Their eight-year-old son Luke attends a local private school and their five-year-old daughter Sian goes to a special school. They also have a young baby daughter Niamh.

Dr Gibson's mother-in-law, Mrs Helen Smith, of Ernlouen Close, Livesey, Blackburn, said: "Howard spoke to a little boy in X-ray who said a burglar had come in and told everyone to kneel on the floor.

"He has taken it badly because he has three children. It's dreadful."

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