MANCHESTER, England — A highly anticipated night for Ariana Grande fans ended in blood and terror after an explosion tore through the foyer of the Manchester Arena.
At least 19 concertgoers were killed and 59 others were injured Monday night.
Shaun Hunter was with his daughters — Eva, 10, and Ruby, 12 — all wearing kitten ears, like the star of the show, when the house lights went on. He called the rush of concertgoers after the explosion “a stampede.”
“I saw one bloke carrying his daughter. She was bleeding,” Hunter told The Times of London.
Police said they were treating the incident as terrorism. An arrest was announced Tuesday. Police said they had arrested a 23-year-old man in Manchester in connection with the attack.
Grande, who had just left the stage, was not hurt.
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Social media carried messages from families concerned about missing loved ones.
Ellie Ward, 17, made his way out of the arena after the blast, and found his 64-year-old grandfather, who had been waiting for him when the explosion happened.
“He said he only realized what had happened when he felt the side of his head and it was bleeding,” the younger Ward told The Guardian newspaper.
“Everyone was screaming and running,” Robert Tempkin, 22, told The Times. “There were coats and people’s phones on the floor. People just dropped everything.”
Elena Semino and her husband were waiting by the arena ticket office for her daughter when the explosion went off.
“My husband and I were standing against the wall, luckily, and all of a sudden there was this thing,” she told The Guardian. “I can’t even describe it. There was this heat on my neck and when I looked up there were bodies everywhere.”
Despite wounds to her neck and a leg, Semino dashed into the auditorium in search of her daughter while her husband, who had only a minor injury, stayed behind to help an injured woman. She found that her daughter Natalie, 17, and her friends were safe.
