Manchester bombing: Father of youngest victim Saffie Roussos tells of moment he had to tell wife their daughter was dead

Andrew Roussos says his partner woke from coma with a sense that eight-year-old Saffie had not survived

The father of the youngest victim of the Manchester Arena bombing has told of the heartbreaking moment he had to tell his wife their daughter had died.

Eight-year-old Saffie Roussos was killed when bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up outside an Ariana Grande concert on 22 May.

Her father, Andrew Roussos, has spoken publicly about his daughter for the first time to mark what would have been her ninth birthday.

Mr Roussos had travelled to Manchester Arena on the night of the attack and said he saw “all hell broke loose” after the bomb was detonated. He was told that Saffie had died by a police detective at a hospital in the hours after the bombing.

Mr Roussos’s wife, Lisa, attended the concert with Saffie and her other daughter, 26-year-old Ashlee Bromwich. She was severely injured in the blast and was placed in an induced coma by doctors.

The father said he had been “dreading” the moment when Lisa would wake up and he would have to tell her that her daughter had died. However, he discovered his wife “remembered everything” about the attack and had an instinct that Saffie had died.

“She looked at me said ‘Saffie’s gone isn’t she?’”, he recalled. “I said ‘yeah’. She went: ‘I knew’.”

Ms Roussos remains in hospital where she is recovering from what her husband described as “injuries all over the body”.

The family have decided to speak publicly about Saffie because, Mr Roussos said, it was his daughter’s dream to be famous and she would have been thrilled to be seen on television.

He told the BBC’s Today programme: “We didn’t want to just let her birthday pass. Saffie loved the limelight and I just wanted to celebrate Saffie’s birthday through doing this.

“You couldn’t be out with Saffie without having fun, but her dream was to be famous. It was her everything and we bought her the tickets for Christmas.

“She was just counting the days, the seconds and it was just Ariana Grande until nine, 10 o’clock at night. And she would sing and dance every single song.”

Speaking later to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire, he added: “Saffie loved fame. Saffie loved to be on camera – that was her goal, that was her dream... I’d love to make her as famous as I possibly can.”

He described his daughter as a “very cheeky, beautiful, stunning young girl that was so forward for her years”.

Ms Bromwich, who was also injured in the attack, said of Saffie: “She was Ariana Grande-obsessed, so to see how happy she was, it was just ... Obviously I had to go with her.”

“She was so happy, just elated all night, grinning.”