Hours after the blast, a 10-year-old girl who fled Manchester Arena, keeps crying — convinced the attack isn’t over.
“She’s just petrified that whoever did this will come to the house or go to her school,” said Coral Long about her daughter.
On Monday night, Long and her daughter were getting ready to leave after the Ariana Grande concert when they heard the explosion.
“At that point, everyone went crazy, running, screaming, jumping over seats,” Long said. “How we weren’t crushed to death is a miracle. The people were pushing and pushing.”
Chaos erupted and concertgoers rushed for the exits. Videos showed streams of people funneled at the staircases as shrieks filled the arena.
Long and her daughter fled the arena uninjured.
The blast outside Manchester Arena left at least 22 people dead including children, and 59 others injured. The attack was carried out by a lone suspect carrying a bomb, police said.
Some witnesses described how smoke filled a corridor and a stairway. Some saw bodies scattered on the floor amid blood and people’s belongings. Frantic parents called out for their children.
“There was a lot of little girls running out, and parents shouting out and yelling names,” witness Ivo Delgado said.
Outside the arena, sobbing kids cried to their parents, “Please get me as far away from here as possible.”
The agonizing wait for answers
Meanwhile, Charlotte Campbell was praying her 15-year-old daughter was alive.
Her daughter, Olivia and her friend Adam were missing after attending the concert, Campbell said.
The pair were so excited about the Grande concert that they talked about it for weeks and bought new clothes for the event. The concert was a treat for Adam’s birthday, she said.
Campbell had spoken to her daughter just before 10 p.m. local time.
“She was enjoying herself and we’ve not heard anything from her since,” Campbell said. “We’ve phoned hospitals, we’ve phoned everywhere we can think. We’ve posted on every social network and there’s nothing.”
Her daughter has been registered as a missing person.
“I just want her to walk through the door,” Campbell said.
“It’s the most horrible feeling ever to know that your daughter’s there. You can’t find her. You don’t know if she’s dead or alive and I don’t know how people can do this to innocent children.”
Monday’s attack struck a nerve for parents.
“It reaches into the core fear of any parent — that you could send your child off to an event and for reasons that are cruel and evil never see them again,” wrote Juliette Kayyem, CNN’s national security analyst.
‘Bodies scattered’
Some witnesses described the panic and carnage following the explosion.
“The sound rattled my chest,” said Andy James, a witness. “I looked up and saw everyone start to scream and run back down the stairs.”
He ran out of the arena with his 9-year-old brother in his arms. Screaming fans streamed out of the arena along with him.
It was the first concert that James’ brother had been to. The tickets were an early birthday present, James said.
“The stewards were trying to calm people down but everyone was running in a stampede,” recalled James, who made his way out of the arena through another exit.
His brother’s heart was “beating out of his chest,” he said.
James said he believed he heard a second explosion as they were running out.
“There was just bodies scattered about everywhere … it was just chaos,” another witness, Kiera Dawber told CNN. “There was at least 20 or 30 people on the floor, some that you could see straight off were just, just dead.”
Dawber said she saw a man holding his wife. “She wasn’t in a very good state,” she said.
The crowd was made up of mainly young people who had come to see Grande in her first of three scheduled concerts in the United Kingdom, on her European and Latin American tour.
Another witness, Joel Goodman, a freelance photographer said: “The injuries I saw … it didn’t look like the sort of injuries that people get from tripping over people in a hurry.”
