MANCHESTER: Desperate parents and friends posted heart-wrenching messages and pictures on social media in the search for their loved ones after the suicide attack in Manchester.
“Please…please retweet. Looking for my daughter and her friend,” Michael MacIntyre wrote on Twitter, alongside an image of his daughter Laura and her friend Eilidh.
Many people had been posting pictures of eight-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos, who some users said had been wearing a white Ariana t-shirt at the gig, with media imploring people to come forward with information about her whereabouts. “The thought that anyone could go out to a concert and not come home is heartbreaking,” said headteacher Chris Upton.
Many parents were waiting for their children in and around the Manchester Arena when the blast rocked the foyer of the venue.
While many teenagers eventually found their friends and relatives in the chaos, some were helped to safety by bystanders, others were offered free taxi rides home and dozens were taken to nearby hotels.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was one of many British artists and celebrities to help spread the word by retweeting messages and posting offers of help.
‘Frantic’: Paula Robinson, 48, was at the train station next to the arena with her husband when she felt the blast and saw dozens of teenage girls screaming and running away from the arena.
“We ran out,” she said. “It was literally seconds after the explosion. I got the teens to run with me.”
Robinson said she took dozens of teenage girls to the nearby Holiday Inn Express hotel and tweeted out her phone number to worried parents telling them to meet her there. She said her phone had not stopped ringing since her tweet.
“Parents were frantic running about trying to get to their children. There were lots of children at Holiday Inn.”
In the hours after the blast, picture montages of smiling faces were being circulated of teens still unaccounted for after the concert. They carried the hashtag: “#PrayForManchester.”
As the picture became clearer on Tuesday after the deadliest militant assault in Britain since 2005, heart-warming stories of reunions began to emerge.
Riley Blackery, who had used Twitter to search for her friend Heather, shared the good news with her followers after a fellow user helped her find her friend: “UPDATE: WE GOT HOLD OF HER, SHES SAFE!! SHES OKAY,” she posted.
