Liam Moore tried to resuscitate Carly Lovett, 24, after she was shot during attack on Sousse beachfront hotel in June 2015

The fiance of a woman killed in the Sousse terror attack in Tunisia battled to save her life after she was shot in the chest, an inquest has heard.

Carly Lovett, 24, told Liam Moore she loved him as she slipped in and out of consciousness in a first-floor corridor of the Imperial Marhaba hotel.

Despite Moore’s desperate attempts to revive her with CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Lovett, from Lincolnshire, died in his arms.

The couple of 11 years were caught up in the armed assault on the hotel by Seifeddine Rezgui, a 23-year-old extremist, on 26 June 2015, which claimed the lives of 38 holidaymakers.

In a statement read to the inquests into the deaths of 30 Britons in the attack, Moore said he and Lovett ran into the hotel from the outdoor pool when they heard gunfire coming from the beach, and were ushered up a flight of stairs into a corridor surrounded by offices.

As Moore and Lovett frantically searched for a room to hide in, with the sound of gunfire moving nearer and nearer, there was suddenly a “massive bang”.

“I could see she [Lovett] was lying on her front in the doorway of one of the offices,” he said. “I think someone might have fallen on top of her. As I was bent down towards her, she was trying to lift herself off the floor.”

As the noise was so loud, Moore assumed she had been hit by a grenade blast. He moved her, fearing another explosion would occur, and noticed there was blood all around her.

“She said she couldn’t move her legs and she was blacking out, and she told me she loved me and I told her I loved her too,” he said.

Moore was urging Lovett to hold on when he realised there was a large wound on her right arm and thought an artery might have been opened.

Lovett, who worked as a photographer and designer, and had a beauty blog, was hoping to become a lecturer. Her official cause of death was recorded as gunshot wound to the chest.

After the attack, Moore and others were taken on a 90-minute coach journey to a morgue in Tunis, the Tunisian capital, to await confirmation of her death. He was handed a photo of his fiancee and confirmed it was her in the early hours of 27 June 2015.

The inquest is hearing evidence on each individual death. It has previously heard evidence from the Foreign Office, and travel company Tui, with which all the victims had booked their holidays.

The inquest also heard from the wife of a former paratrooper who was shot dead during the attack outside the front of the five-star hotel. John Stollery, 58, and his wife, Cheryl, were running away from the sound of gunfire when he was shot in the head and killed.

She told the hearing they had gone for a swim, leaving their son, Matthew, on the fourth floor of the hotel. Giving evidence in person, Stollery told the inquest that the gunman ran right past her outside the hotel.

“I turned round thinking John was still immediately behind me and said: ‘John, he is there, he has got a gun.’



“The gunman went past me. I expected him [her husband] to be at the side of me or just behind me. And when I turned around John was on the floor. “I screamed: ‘No’ very loudly and: ‘John, John’. I went back up to him, stood over him and I could see from that moment he had already died.

“Although his eyes were open, there was nothing there. I could see the damage caused to his head, especially the left-hand side of his temple.”



Stollery stood over her husband for a few seconds before frantically searching for her son. They were eventually reunited. Together they later went to Tunis, where Stollery identified her husband’s body, with the tattoo of an eagle on his arm leaving her in no doubt.

After witnessing her husband being shot, but before finding her son, she ran back into the hotel to find it deserted; Stollery said she hid in a phone-booth and later went into a dining room.



Stollery told the inquest she did not see security at the hotel during her stay, and that TV crews were at the scene after the attack before the authorities arrived.



Stollery had completed two tours in Belfast as a private in the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment.



He worked for Nottinghamshire county ouncil for more than three decades, including 16 years dedicated to helping children in care, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in social sciences in 2007.

The inquest continues.