A communications specialist from Moscow, Andrei was at the concert of the Picnic group at Crocus City Hall on March 22 with his family: his wife, 16-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter. The 39-year-old man initially bought the tickets as a gift for his wife back in January, but when their children found out that their parents were going to a concert of their favorite musicians, they demanded to take them with them. Therefore, the spouses and the brother and sister had different places.
“My wife and I had to sit in the second row of the VIP stalls, and the children in the 12th row of the stalls,” notes RT’s interlocutor. According to Andrei, if they had time to take their seats, they could have been hit by terrorist bullets with a high probability, since they were in close proximity to the stage: “Perhaps we would no longer be alive.”
However, the family did not make it to the hall: they were delayed by a series of circumstances. “On the way, we stopped by my godson to congratulate him on his birthday. When we entered Crocus, we lingered in the cloakroom on the minus first floor. They were waiting for their wife, and the children wanted to buy T-shirts at the stand where they sold souvenirs of the group. Only on the minus first floor there were several outlets with merchandise,” he explains.
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They never bought the T-shirts. When the family heard the noise and saw a bustle that was still incomprehensible at that time, they at first decided that some kind of performance was taking place upstairs.
“This is Picnic, they can have anything. We mistook the first sounds of falling glass and gunfire for firecrackers. We looked at the girl behind the souvenir counter, and she was looking up in confusion. Then it began to dawn on us that the employees themselves were not aware of what was happening, that is, this was not a planned part of the show, but something beyond the normal. Then I heard machine gun fire, people screamed and ran,” recalls the Muscovite.
At that moment, the family found themselves on both sides of the escalator leading to the first floor: Andrei was next to his daughter, and his son was closer to the toilet, where his mother was. “I told him: grab your mom and run,” continues RT’s interlocutor.
The flow of spectators fleeing the terrorists did not allow the family to reunite immediately. The wife and the eldest child headed in one direction, and her husband and the youngest went in the other, from where they got out into the parking lot. According to him, the people running out there could not understand whether it was safe to be there: “We were afraid that there might be one of the terrorists there too. We walked very carefully, maneuvering between cars. We went outside and were met by a driver who took us to the concert. Fortunately, he didn’t have time to go far, quickly responded to my call and returned.”
“I wanted to thank you”
Andrei was going to put his daughter in the car, and he himself planned to return to the concert hall to pick up his wife and son. But at that moment his wife called him and said that she and her eldest child had safely gotten out of Crocus City Hall.
“They opened the door near the toilet under the escalator on the minus first floor,” says Andrey. - As I understand it, there is no usual exit there, but there was some kind of service door, to which they quickly found the keys and let people out through it while we walked around the parking lot, not yet understanding what was happening. My wife and son came out almost simultaneously with us, but on the other side and ran towards Vegas (one of the Crocus buildings -
RT
), where we picked them up.”
Now Andrei is looking for the Crocus employee who helped his wife and son escape. “If suddenly RT has an understanding from the stories you published who was the person who quickly found the keys and opened the door under the escalators near the toilets on the minus first floor, I would really like to thank him,” says the Muscovite. “The wife says the door was locked.”
© From personal archive
About March 22, Andrei and his relatives now say: “The second birthday of our family.” The ten minutes that passed from the sounds of the first shots to the moment when they were racing away from the Crocus in a car changed their lives forever, Andrei adds: “The first reaction when we got into the car, of course, was relief: “We are all here.” , everyone is alive, everything is fine.” But then the realization came of what exactly happened in the concert hall. Our story is rather banal. When we later picked up our things from Crocus, I heard what other visitors who happened to be at the performance that evening were saying. Their stories just give me chills; it would be better not to hear it. It’s very scary to know what people are facing.”