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MOSCOW, March 25 A spectator who survived the terrorist attack in the Crocus City Hall concert hall told how the search was carried out before the concert and about the meeting with the terrorist in the hall .
Elena Polynkova went to the concert of her favorite band “Picnic” at Crocus City Hall with a colleague: tickets were purchased in advance, back in February, and they did not have any bad premonitions.
“I remember well, because we arrived and there wasn’t much time — half an hour before the start. We came to Crocus for the first time, we wanted to see everything and not be late. A colleague went to the cafe on the second floor at the entrance, went for water, for ice cream, at that time I went down to the wardrobe and handed over my things,” she said.
Elena noted that at the entrance they were searched by guards, there was even a dog handler with a dog. “There was an inspection: I walked through a frame in my outerwear, they checked my bag visually. There wasn’t any very thorough inspection, but there were definitely people standing everywhere and looking at who was going through with what,” she shared.
Before the concert started at 19.55, Elena and her colleague entered the hall and sat down in their seats. “I took a photograph of the scene, and it was 19.57. Literally a minute later the shooting started,” she said.
According to her, the audience did not immediately understand what had happened; some even mistook the sounds for part of the show and remained in place. But after a wounded girl ran into the hall through the main entrance in the center and screamed that there was shooting in the hall, people realized that they had to leave. At first, Elena and a group of people ran in the wrong direction, but then the usher showed them the way up, where there was an exit. “We stood near this door, everyone froze, because it was scary to run out, no one knows where, no one knows what. They were shooting somewhere in the hall in front of the entrance to the hall. It’s scary to go out there, because we’ll probably go straight to the terrorists. And when we saw that one person ran through the main entrance — the shooting had not yet started in the hall, we just saw him — and we suddenly ran through that door,” she said.
Due to her state of shock, Elena did not remember the details of the terrorist’s appearance, but she noticed a weapon in his hands. «I saw only one person who ran into the hall. It was the entrance to amphitheater No. 2. He ran straight to the control panel, where the guys who adjusted the sound were sitting. I decided that it was a terrorist, because it was a man who had two He held the machine gun with his hands and ran,” she added.
According to the girl, she was one of the first who managed to leave the hall; a group of several dozen people went down to the first floor. The front door was closed, but the men were able to break out the glass — and people ended up on the street, and then went out to the embankment. Elena saw the explosion and fire in Crocus when she ran out onto the Pavshinsky Bridge.
She noted that she was lucky to be in the hall, and not in the hall, when the shooting began. “I, of course, have enormous sympathy and condolences with the families of those killed in this terrible tragedy!” — she concluded.
The shooting and fire occurred on the evening of March 22 before a concert at Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk near Moscow. A correspondent who witnessed the incident reported that several men in camouflage and without masks burst into the hall, they shot people point-blank and threw incendiary bombs. According to the latest data from the Investigative Committee, 137 people died, three of whom were children. The editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya media group and the RT television channel, Margarita Simonyan, reported that the number of victims had risen to 143. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, 152 people were injured as a result of the terrorist attack. March 24 was declared a day of national mourning.