Witness says airport bomber first shot people at random
A man who survived the coordinated attack Tuesday at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport said he saw one of the suicide bombers shoot people indiscriminately before he blew himself up.
Paul Roos, 77, told Reuters he was getting ready to board a plane back to his home in Cape Town, South Africa, when he saw the attacker "randomly" open fire as he walked through the terminal. "He was just firing at anyone coming in front of him," he said. "He was wearing all black. His face was not masked. I was 50 meters away from him."
Roos said he ducked behind a counter with his wife, but soon stood up to see what was going on. "Two explosions went off shortly after one another," he said. "By that time he had stopped shooting. He turned around and started coming towards us. He was holding his gun inside his jacket. He looked around anxiously to see if anyone was going to stop him and then went down the escalator…We heard some more gunfire and then another explosion, and then it was over."
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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