According to Ward's confessions, she was an "IRA volunteer" who had planted the M62 coach bomb in the luggage compartment of the coach while the vehicle was parked at Manchester Chorlton Street coach station. The luggage compartment had already been open when she, "shaking like a leaf", placed the bag containing the bomb between "a few army issue bags" in the luggage compartment. She had then turned and "legged it" out of the station, expecting the bomb to explode in twenty minutes.