'FREAKING' OUT'
Trampling over riders in a bid to escape
A routine Monday morning descended into chaos, then panic, under the Port Authority Bus Terminal when a terrorist detonated a bomb, sending rush-hour commuters trampling over each other to get to the exits.
“It was jampacked down there,” Jamar Moore, 39, said, describing the scene in the subway passage below the busy transit hub.
“Next thing I know, it was ‘Booooom!’ S- -t started shaking. Everybody breaks out to the right, hitting steps. People started getting trampled. I see about three to four people falling. Shoes are coming off.”
MTA station cleaner Sean Monroe, 32, said he was near the suspect, Akayed Ullah, when Ullah detonated the crude bomb strapped to his body.
“The people around him fell to the floor,” Monroe said. “As soon as they fell, they got back up and started running.
“I pointed my arm out to the right and directed them because that was the nearest exit from the station.
“It was like something out of a movie,” Moore said. “They were frantic, they were running, they didn’t know where to go.”
Then a woman “started to walk toward where he [Ullah] was laying. I told her, ‘Miss, you can’t walk over there.’ She said, ‘But my shoe and my wallet.’
“So I went to get her shoe, and I went back and brought it to her because I knew she only had one shoe, so she would be able to run. I know it’s hard to run with just one shoe.”
Among the three innocent people injured was Veronica Chavez, 45, who was on her way to work when the bomb went off.
It was “awful because she saw people fall to the ground. She saw dust everywhere. She saw people under debris,’’ said Chavez’s brother, Alfonso Chavez, 42.
“She’s nervous. She’s scared,’’ he said. “Like everyone else, we’re angry.’’
Scores of NYPD SWAT teams quickly converged on the scene, blocking off entrances and exits and temporarily halting traffic in and out of the transit hub while they apprehended Ullah and, at one point, searched for a suspected accomplice.
Authorities later said Ullah was a “lone wolf.’’
Sarah Benelli, 35, of Inwood in upper Manhattan said she was taking the A to her Midtown job
when her train came to a halt at 42nd Street at around 7:30 a.m.
“I had headphones on, but I felt this rattle in my chest. I pulled the headphones out, and it sounded just like thunder,” she said. “It reverberated for a couple seconds, and it was really loud.”
Then “I heard people on the platform running on the train. There were a couple expletives. People were obviously scared. A few people ducked down in the train, and people were shouting to get away from the doors so the doors could close. They wanted to get out of there.”
“I didn’t know what had happened — whether there was a train crash or an actual blast or a piece of construction equipment falling down. A lot of possibilities going through my head,” she said.
“I’m still a little shaky. Anybody who I go to work with could eas- ily have been in harm’s way today.ay. It’s really terrifying.”
Jonathan Miles, 28, of Ver-mont said he was at the terminal waiting for a bus when “we saw cops running.”
“They start telling everybody ‘Everybody grab your stuff ! Getet out!’ I said, ‘Oh, s- -t, I need to get out.’ I was freaking out in my head.
“It’s beyond sad,” Miles said, al-although he added, “It could’ve been way worse.
“But they handled it really fast.st. . . . I just really wasn’t expecting it to be a bomb. But when I saw all those armed cops, I knew it was serious.”
Elrana Peralta, who was work-rking for Greyhound in the bus terminal, told The Associated Press she didn’t see the bombing — “All we could hear was the chaos.”