Warrington to fall silent 30 years on from bomb attack that killed two boys

Warrington will soon fall silent as it remembers a tragic 1993 bomb attack that led to the death of two boys.

On Mother's Day 30 years ago, 12-year-old Tim Parry and three-year-old Johnathan Ball were both out in town hoping to buy a card for their mother. Half-an-hour prior, a coded IRA message to the Samaritan warned that a bomb would go off in Liverpool city centre - 19 miles away from Warrington.

Just three weeks before, on February 26, 1993, an initial IRA attack on Winwick Road gas works had left the city wary. The group planted four bombs, throwing a fireball 1,000 feet in the air.

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In this initial attack, however, no one was injured and one bomb on a petrol tank didn't go off alongside another failed explosives underneath a series of tanks located 50 yards away from a housing estate, avoiding a potential tragedy, the Liverpool Echo reports.

Cheshire County Fire Officer Dennis David said in 1993: "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if the bomb on the cylinders had gone off we could have been facing a most dreadful situation. But luckily, the device only damaged the mountings."

Tragically, the second attack didn't have the same outcome. On March 20, 1993, police in Warrington were alerted to the possibility of a bomb going off before, at 12.12pm, two bombs exploded in the town centre - one outside Boots on Bridge Steet and another outside Argos.

Johnathan was killed at the scene while Tim tragically died five days later in hospital. Superintendent Deborah Hooper had only been working as a police constable for 12 months at the time of the bombing on Bridge Street. In a previous interview, she said: “As soon as I saw it