Witnesses have described seeing the Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi loitering and praying, while in possession of a large rucksack, near the spot where he would later carry out the attack that killed 22 people and left hundreds injured. Two security workers employed to look out for bootleggers told the Manchester Arena inquiry that they saw him, while one said she unsuccessfully tried to alert police to his presence. Giving evidence on Thursday, Julie Merchant told the inquiry of the moment Abedi smiled at her shortly before carrying out the atrocity on 22 May 2017, saying they briefly made eye contact and remembering that she thought he was a “crank”. While she did not suspect Abedi of being a terrorist, she said she tried to tell a British Transport police officer that he was loitering on the mezzanine overlooking the foyer in which he carried out the attack. But she said the officer did not respond. The inquiry has previously heard that BTP constable Jessica Bullough, who will give evidence next week, recalls nothing of the conversation. “Even though I wasn’t suspicious of him, ie worst-case scenario he was going to be a bomber, what I was suspicious of is that he had secreted himself away. And maybe, when we were clearing the place later on, [the officer] needed to know that he was there. “So, in that way it was a security issue. But I wasn’t aware of any feelings of: ‘Oh my God, he could be a terrorist.’ But I did think it was worth noting because he was in an area where we shouldn’t have been,” Merchant told the inquiry. Her supervisor, William Drysdale, said he saw Abedi praying in the same area. He described seeing him either kneeling or sitting at the top of a ramp leading up to the mezzanine. He was leaning forward towards the floor and raising himself back up again, he said. Drysdale, known as Billy to his colleagues, said he did not mark it as particularly suspicious at the time because he did not think it was unusual for practising Muslims to find a “quiet spot” in which to pray. And both of the anti-bootlegging guards told the inquiry the rucksack did not appear unusual because travellers using the neighbouring Manchester Victoria station also passed through that area. “We didn’t think it was suspicious. We thought it was a guy, he’s travelling, he’s missed his prayer time [and] he’s gone for a prayer. And it’s only when, after the bomb went off, I thought: ‘Oh my God, please don’t let it be him.’ Because you then get issues of: ‘I could have stopped him, I could have done this, I could have done that,’” Merchant told the inquiry. Giving evidence on Wednesday, a security supervisor working in the area where the explosion took place told the inquiry he could never recall being asked to check the mezzanine, a known CCTV blindspot, in more than two decades of service. While he said some other security guards would occasionally use it as a vantage point, David Middleton said it was not seen as part of his team’s job to check there.