Royal Gazette columnist Christian Dunleavy was in the crowds as the horses bolted at last night’s Harbour Nights. Here, taken from his website www.politics.bm is his first-hand account.About five minutes after the Gombeys began to perform at the flagpole there were screams coming from further down Front Street, towards the bird cage.

I turned around and saw two white horses pulling a carriage, with no driver in it, bolting at full pace towards the five or six row deep crowd, backs turned, of which I was at the back with my family and brother’s family.

While some people (including us) were able to get out of the way, others were trapped in the crowd, oblivious to what was about to happen as the horses and carriage crashed into the crowd, adjacent to the state. A number of people were trapped beneath the horses and the carriage.

The crowd got together to lift the carriage up, and get people underneath out as quickly as they could while securing the horses. There were a number of injuries, some cuts and head wounds and some that appeared potentially more severe.

Emergency services were there quickly with the centre area being cordoned off for what appeared to be about five to ten more seriously injured people. Hopefully these will turn out to be minor and everyone will recover. Let’s hope. It was a scary moment, but the emergency services, off-duty nurses, police officers and those in attendance responded quickly.

A sad start to what was looking like a great kick-off to Harbour Nights.

Mr Dunleavy, 33, of Smiths, spoke to The Royal Gazette afterwards and added that the experience was particularly frightening because of the children present.

He said he was concerned for his two-year-old twin daughters, and five-year-old eldest daughter.

“We all started to get out of the way but people were six rows deep watching the Gombeys. Because of the drums and hum of everything, I don’t think a lot of people heard it coming.

“The horses just careered into the crowd near the stage.”

He added: “There was a lot of blood. After the carriage was lifted there were five to ten injured people who remained on the ground.

“We left ten minutes later but my five-year-old was upset and had a lot of questions. The twins were more oblivious to what had happened, but I think for kids it was very frightening, to see horses crashing into a crowd like that.

“The atmosphere afterwards was just shock, people were stunned.”