A British IT consultant was killed on a metro train in the Brussels terror attacks one year ago after texting his partner and mother of his son to say he was safe, unaware he was sitting next to the bomber and moments from death.
David Dixon, 50, messaged his girlfriend, Charlotte Sutcliffe, to say he was safe after terrorists had detonated two devices at Brussels airport about an hour earlier, but was killed shortly after in a blast on board the train, an inquest heard.
A counter-terrorism police officer told the inquest that Dixon, the only Briton killed in the attack, was most likely sat next to the bomber, now known to be Khalid El Bakraoui, who also died in the explosion.
The Hartlepool coroner, Malcolm Donnelly, recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.
Dixon had lived in Brussels for about 12 years and was on his way to work when he got on the metro train at Maelbeek station just after 8am on 22 March last year.
CCTV played to the inquest showed the bomber trying to board the train’s crowded first carriage. “Having been unable to gain access he made his way to a second carriage, where he entered just before the train moved off, and almost immediately a blast occurred in the second carriage,” Donnelly told the hearing.
Hearing evidence from a counter-terrorism police officer involved in the subsequent investigation, Donnelly asked: “The best guess is that Mr Dixon was sitting next to the bomber?” The officer said: “From our understanding, yes.”
Dixon, the father of an eight-year-old boy and originally from Hartlepool, was one of 32 people killed in the coordinated attacks, which also left 320 injured. He died of devastating injuries suffered in the blast and was later identified through dental records and DNA.
The bomber used a homemade device packed with nuts and bolts, which Donnelly said was intended to cause maximum damage to innocent people. He said photographs of the scene showed carnage and chaos.
Ingredients consistent with the bomb used on the train were found by authorities in a flat used by one of the airport bombers, which the inquest heard described as a bomb-making factory.
Donnelly told Monday’s hearing: “The particular depths of obscenity that people use an ostensibly loving God to deliberately kill and maim innocent people is something which is difficult to comprehend. The suffering is indiscriminate. Thirty-two people died. There were 320 maimed.
“Mr Dixon was unlawfully killed clearly, but that doesn’t begin to describe the hurt and the feelings of loss of those that are left behind.”
The bombing on the train was attributed to El Bakraoui, 27, the younger brother of Ibrahim El Bakraoui, who committed the suicide bombing at the airport.
He was a known criminal who in 2011 was convicted and jailed for several carjackings, the possession of a number of Kalashnikov rifles, and a 2009 bank robbery and kidnapping. After being released in 2015, El Bakraoui failed to turn up for his parole appointments and abandoned his address. He was later served with three arrest warrants, one from Interpol, one international, and one European.
Sutcliffe, mother to the couple’s son, Henry, grew up in Creswell, Derbyshire, before moving to Brussels with Dixon.
She had to wait for four days before his death could be confirmed. During that time last year she said: “It’s been very difficult time for me and for everyone who knows David. It’s been just so difficult not knowing anything and not hearing anything.”
Dixon had left his apartment block in a smart southern suburb of Brussels as normal on the Tuesday morning of the attack. He had not realised his adopted city was under attack until he was told by his aunt, Ann Dixon, who texted him from her home in Hartlepool, the inquest heard.
A few minutes later he apparently boarded the metro train on which the huge bomb was detonated as it passed through Maelbeek, one stop from the European commission and EU council buildings at Schuman metro station.
The perpetrators belonged to a terrorist cell that had been involved in the November 2015 Paris attacks. The Brussels bombings happened shortly after police raids targeting the group. The bombings were reportedly the deadliest act of terrorism in Belgium’s history.
