After returning home, Alyona Kazinskaya said she just “hugged everyone.”
Moscow:
Russian artist Alyona Kazinskaya likes to post cheerful messages and vivid floral paintings on her social media. For 30 minutes last Friday night, it became a timeline of horror.
Kazinskaya and a friend bought last-minute tickets to see the Soviet-era rock band Picnic perform in front of an audience of 6,200 at a concert hall near Moscow. They thought about taking their daughter, but decided to go alone.
Kazinskaya posted the first 10-second audio message on her Telegram channel at 8:01 p.m., sounding breathless and terrified as gunfire rang out.
“I love you all. I was at Crocus City Hall for a picnic. They were shooting here, at the concert. I was in the lobby. Call the police.”
When four gunmen armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles burst into the building and opened fire on concertgoers, Kazinskaya found herself in the middle of Russia’s deadliest attack in 20 years.
As of Thursday, 143 people were confirmed to have been killed in the massacre, which Islamic State militants claimed responsibility but Russia sought to link to Ukraine – despite Kyiv’s strenuous denials.
Kazinskaya told Reuters in an interview that she quickly understood that the sounds she heard were gunshots and not special effects. Together with her friends, she tried to get those around her to get out of their seats and run away.
“We tried to get people to stand up, we got them up but people were already running to the exits and we couldn’t get through. That’s when they (the gunmen) entered the hall. Then I threw my friend to the floor, And I said ‘let’s crawl’.”
Garbled messages
Kashinskaya said her first thought was to leave the hall at all costs. “My second thought was I was wearing white and I was a good target.”
She paused and laughed.
“Finally, the third thought is that I’m going to write something now – yes, I’m scared, but I’m going to put these messages in my (Telegram) channel because then someone somewhere will definitely hear it them, find them and call someone.”
At 8:08 p.m., her fingers trembled when she answered the phone, and she wrote three messages in quick succession, confusing the letters.
“Please call the police!!!!”
“Crocus City Hall”
“shooting”
By this time, the two men had escaped from the lobby, but were still trapped in the building. The shooting stopped, but now there was another danger.
8:17 PM A one-word audio message. “fire!”
Gunmen used gasoline to set fire to the huge concert hall. The two friends hid in the toilet. There was smoke everywhere. Six times they tried to get out, but couldn’t see anything and kept retreating.
Kazinskaya is losing hope.
At 8:23 p.m., she left a four-second audio message that she believed would be her last.
“I love you goodbye.”
The two became disoriented and found themselves in another toilet, where more people were hiding. There was a guy there who said he thought he could find a way out. They followed him and managed to escape the building – but even then, Kazinskaya still felt unsafe.
“I only had two thoughts. The first was that I needed first aid because I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were burning and I was having an asthma attack. The second thought was that I had to get as far away from the building as possible.”
She left a new audio message at 8:31 p.m. “I’m alive. I’m getting first aid. I’m out. Thank you.”
After returning home, Kazinskaya said she just “hugged everyone.” Now, she said, it will be a long time before she can go to a club or a big concert again. But she took comfort in the outpouring of support she received.
“I think society itself needs to be kinder,” she said. “Because when bad things happen, we remember that we are human, but we need to be human every day.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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