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MANCHESTER, England — Rihanna Hardy had been excited about seeing Ariana Grande ever since she got her concert ticket as a Christmas gift. So when the day came, the 11- yearold left school a couple of hours early to make sure to get to Manchester Arena on time.
Her parents, Ryan and Shauna, took the afternoon off work, and the family drove more than 200 kilometers from Newcastle to Manchester. They struggled to find the arena’s multistory parking lot, and barely managed to buy Rihanna a black Ariana Grande tour sweatshirt before the concert started.
But what was supposed to be a special night for Rihanna and thousands of other young concertgoers turned into a tragedy when a suicide bomb blasted off just outside the cavernous hall. It killed 22 people, including an 8-year-old girl, and injured 59 the deadliest attack in Britain in more than a decade.
“Poor Rihanna ... just kept asking every five or 10 seconds, ‘Are we going to die?’ Those were her exact words,” her father said.
The family took their seats, close to the stage, just before the first of two supporting acts warmed up the crowd. The arena, which seats 21,000, was packed. Many clutched pink balloons and donned cat ears, like those the 23-year-old Grande is famous for wearing.
As Grande sang and danced her way through her set, the arena heated up. Young children and their parents glistened with sweat.
Then, as the concert ended, the horror began.
Just a few minutes after Grande finished her final song, blew a kiss to the audience and left the stage, the house lights came back on. People began filing toward the exits.
It was then that a suspect identified as 22-year-old Salman Abedi set off the bomb in the foyer, near a road linking the venue to the city’s railway station. Witnesses described seeing bolts and other bits of metal at the scene of the blast.
Horrendous
The boom echoed through the arena, shaking the floor with a hollow thud. Thousands of fans, many of them youngsters accompanied by their parents, fell silent for a few seconds, in shock. Then the screaming started.
“I thought we were going to die. It was just horrendous,” said Rihanna’s mother. Panic descended on the hall. “It was just sheer chaos,” said Kirstyn Pollard, who had a seat close to the stage. “People were trying to get off the balconies. It was awful.”
Melissa Andre and two friends clambered over a security barrier in their rush to get out. It was already dented from other concertgoers fleeing the arena, as officials tried frantically to restore order.
“A security official was on stage saying ‘Be calm, everything’s fine’,” said Andre, 20. “I think they were just saying that to calm people down before they got out. And then when we got out, the alarm went off.”
Police were called in at 10:33 pm. As they arrived, a smell hung in the air a bit like smoke, a bit like burning, nothing the Hardys had ever smelled before.
“I can’t describe it. It was a really awful smell,” Shauna Hardy said. “And there was just alarms going off, police everywhere. Sirens everywhere. People running, screaming. It was just crazy. Absolutely crazy.”