NI honeymooner caught up in horror tells of chaos and panic
A HONEYMOONER from Northern Ireland last night spoke of his shock as he and his wife were caught up in the terrorist carnage of Barcelona.
Martin and Sharon Kane from west Belfast were on the second day of their dream Mediterranean honeymoon when a terrorist drove a van into shoppers and tourists on Las Ramblas, the busiest street in the Catalonian capital.
Thirteen people were killed and dozens were injured in the horror rampage.
The death toll is expected to rise.
Martin (53) and Sharon (48) had been on a coach tour of Barcelona yesterday afternoon. The coach was about to reach its last stop when they realised something was wrong.
“The driver came around to us all panicky,” Martin explained.
“He said: ‘The police have cordoned off Las Ramblas — if you want to go down there, you go down at your own risk’.”
The couple got off the coach and were walking down the street towards their hotel when police started to push them back.
“We were panicking. We didn’t know how to get back to our hotel,” he said.
“The next minute everyone started running. One girl slipped and fell on her face in the chaos.
“People were screaming and crying. It was a stampede. Then the sirens began.
“We just ran into the nearest hotel — there were no taxis, nothing.
“Nobody was helping us, nobody was telling us what was going on.
“We were all panicking. My wife was crying her eyes out.”
Martin and Sharon — who were married in Andersonstown Social Club in Belfast on August 4 — are due to leave the city on Sunday, taking a cruise ship to Rome on the next leg of their honeymoon.
Last night Martin said that Sharon “hadn’t stopped crying” since their brush with savage international terrorism yesterday afternoon.
South Armagh woman Alana Fearon was also caught up in the terror attack.
Alana, a journalist from Camlough, told RTE she had seen tourists starting to run down the middle of the busy shopping street.
“We started to get really, really panicked,” she said.
“All of a sudden a police car came up with police shouting through a megaphone: ‘Indoors, indoors’.
“All I can see is cordons, sirens, police, helicopters.”
With relief in her voice, the Dublin-based journalist said she was hoping to fly back to Ireland last night.