Survivors Describe Shots, Silence, Then the Screams

Two Americans who survived today’s murderous assault on passengers at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport said that when the grenade blasts and shooting stopped, there was silence. Then the screams of the wounded and dying split the air.

At least 13 people were killed in the early-morning attack in which five terrorists threw hand grenades and fired indiscriminately at holiday travelers checking in at TWA, Pan American and El Al Israel airlines, police said.

Among those killed was an American, 11-year-old Natasha Simpson.

Her mother, Daniella Simpson, 40, told the Associated Press: “I was walking the dog out by the terminal, and my husband and the children were inside doing the check-in.

‘A Shattering Noise’

“Suddenly there was a shattering noise, as if something were collapsing. And then there were machine-gun bursts, two distinct machine-gun bursts. And then silence,” she said.

“I rushed in (amid) screams and cries, and saw my husband dripping blood from his hand and my son on the floor shot in the stomach. They are both OK. But I lost my 11-year-old daughter,” she said. Daniella Simpson works for Time magazine and writes fashion stories for the Associated Press.

Her husband, Victor Simpson, 43, news editor of the AP in Rome, and his 9-year-old son, Michael, were hospitalized with injuries.

Another witness, Elisabel Del Grande, said she saw a man in a camel hair overcoat, probably a plainclothes security guard, run up and begin wrestling with one of the terrorists as he fired into the crowd.

Shot Into Terrorist’s Head

“He tried to grab the terrorist’s gun, kicking him on the arm, but the terrorist resisted and a second man, also in civilian clothes, rushed up behind him and fired a pistol shot into his (the terrorist’s) head,” she said.

Jonathan Pollack, 21, of New York City, who calls himself “an American traveling with a backpack,” was in the lobby during the attack.

Speaking from the U.S. Embassy in Rome to AP Radio, Pollack said that when the terrorists attacked, “I heard a couple of yells and shouts. Whoever the attackers were, they were dressed just like me.”

Pollack, who was wounded in an arm, said: “The screaming, the yelling, it was very loud.

“I looked up and I saw Italians fighting everywhere. I saw people dying, they were all over, dying, dead. Bleeding all over the place. Everyone was screaming in Italian,” Pollack said.

An ambulance took Pollack to a first aid station at the airport and then he was conveyed to a hospital.