Dave Thompson/Getty Images(MANCHESTER, England) — Abby Barker was just getting ready to leave an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, when she heard “an extremely loud bang,” she said, and the Manchester Arena dissolved into mass chaos and panic.
Barker told ABC News that the “Dangerous Woman” singer had just left the stage, the music had cut off and the lights were on, when the reported bang happened.
“Everyone over there started running in different directions, screaming,” Barker said. “We all started panicking too and ran out the doors and ran down the stairs out of the arena. We got outside and children were crying their eyes out, people talking about it being a bomb, gunshots, there were many parents running towards the arena but no one knew exactly what it was.”
Greater Manchester police report that 19 people are dead and around 50 others are injured. In a statement, police said they were called to the arena at just before 10:35 p.m. local time on Monday. At the moment, the incident is being treated as a “terrorist incident until police know otherwise.”
Eyewitness Karen Ford told the BBC that the “huge sound … sounded like an explosion went off.”
“Everyone just stopped and turned around, and then somebody shouted ‘it’s a bomb’ and everyone just started running,” she continued. “Everybody was trying to push people up the stairs. There was a lot of children there without parents. There was no one to calm them down so everyone was just screaming, crying and pushing.”
Emergency personnel treated some of the injured at Manchester’s Victoria railway station near the arena.
Andy Holey, an eyewitness, told the BBC that he was waiting outside the concert and was blown over by the force of what he described as an “explosion.” When he awoke, he said he saw many casualties around him. He added that it was unclear if they were injured or dead.
Manchester Arena sent out a tweet after the incident, saying the reported explosion happened outside the concert venue.
— Manchester Arena (@ManchesterArena) May 23, 2017
Reps for Grande confirmed that she was not harmed.
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