A KEIGHLEY businessman whose teenage daughters were crushed to death has spoken emotionally of how he battled to save them.

Sarah and Victoria Hicks were among the 96 people who died in the Hillsborough tragedy.

This week, father Trevor gave harrowing evidence at an inquest into the deaths.

Sarah, 19, and Victoria, 15, had been standing in the central pens behind the goal on the Leppings Lane terrace when tragedy struck.

Wearing a red '96' commemorative badge adorned on his suit, Mr Hicks told the inquest – sitting in Warrington – that he called out their names as he gave them mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions.

And he described the heartbreaking moment he had "no choice" but to leave his elder daughter on the pitch as he carried Vicki into an ambulance.

Liverpool University student Sarah and her football-mad sister had travelled to the ground with their parents on April 15, 1989, for the FA Cup semi-final.

Mr Hicks relived the moment he saw the "limp form" of his youngest daughter being passed over a fence onto the pitch after the surge.

As he made his way down from his position in the south-west terrace underneath the police box, he found both of his daughters lying side-by-side.

He said: "I was going to do everything possible and everyone else seemed to be doing that.

"I have always been taught that one of the last things that goes is the hearing so I was calling their names as well in the hope that they'd know we were there."

He added that he had to clear Vicki's airways by sucking the vomit from her throat and had seen her chest rising as he did so.

The inquest was told that once an ambulance arrived on the pitch, he carried Vicki, assisted by another, before turning to get Sarah.

But another casualty was lifted into the ambulance meantime.

"I was faced with the awful choice of leaving Sarah, who I was assured would be placed in the next ambulance which was apparently coming," he said.

"It was chaos. Basically everybody was looking after their casualty, or in my case, casualties."

On the way to the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield, he and policeman Peter McGuinness continued CPR on Vicki and he said he believed he had felt a faint pulse.

But he was told his youngest daughter had passed away and his "immediate attention switched back to Sarah".

The inquest heard that he had split from the girls in order to get a programme and coffee but had an excellent view of the pen.

"I'd been seeing what was going on for some time," he said. "I was calling up to the police officer to do something about it.

"It was clear that there were extreme circumstances in the pen.

"I was looking down and could see that there were people in distress."

Mr Hicks had earlier described Sarah as a "classic A student" and that Vicki had been determined to be a sports writer, producing secret match reports from their home after every trip to Anfield.

Anthony Garratty, who was a steward at the match, said he witnessed Vicki "moaning and groaning" on the pitch.

He said a St John Ambulance man had come to the scene and a policeman asked him for oxygen.

The policeman was to then ask a fireman, who handed over an oxygen cylinder.

But Mr Garratty, who broke down whilst giving his evidence, said: "The oxygen bottle was empty. The fireman said there was nothing in it, he had already used it on other casualties."