IPSWICH: A commuter has described his desperate attempts to keep horrifically injured passengers, including an Ipswich shop worker, alive after the Aldgate bombing.

Trained first aider Steven Desborough stayed on the stricken train to help the wounded and dying, offering comfort to Carrie Taylor and Richard Ellery, who worked in Ipswich’s Jessops store, in their final moments following the terrorist attacks in London on July 7, 2005.

The inquests into the deaths of the 52 innocent victims heard that Mr Desborough was travelling in the sixth carriage of the Circle Line train when Shehzad Tanweer detonated his homemade rucksack bomb in the second carriage.

As he was being evacuated from the train, he passed the “obliterated” second carriage and saw the “total carnage” inside.

Lying in one of the blown-out doorways was Mr Ellery, 21, from Ipswich, who was “almost in a foetal position”.

Mr Desborough told the inquests: “Every so often he would give out a loud cry and he would also kick out as well, start moving his arms and his legs and rolling around on the floor there.

“I did my best to calm him down. I couldn’t reach to actually see over him and see what injuries he had.

“I couldn’t actually administer first aid because I was still outside the carriage at that point.”

Mr Desborough said he did not stay to help Mr Ellery because he then climbed up a ladder into a different part of the carriage.

The inquest heard how Mr Ellery, originally from Southampton, had been looking forward to spending a rare day in London on July 7, 2005.

Mr Ellery was on his way to a training course at the firm’s Kensington branch when he was caught in the Aldgate blast.

Reading a written statement from one of his flatmates who saw him the night before he died, Hugo Keith QC said: “Richard was his normal self – a funny, lively guy – and looking forward to his course in London.

“It made it all the harder that this was snatched away from him on July 7, 2005,” he said.

Mr Ellery, who moved in with friends in Ipswich shortly before he died, had woken up late on the morning of July 7 and only just made the train to London, the inquests heard.