Hooligans in black hoods, smoke bombs and large bottles of vinaigrette in the air, gendarmerie, student-guards running away, cannon fire.
A lot of things happened in Dragoslav Jovanovića Street in a few minutes, just before the roar of the Kralja Milana.
The "Vreme" team still investigating the incident with the help of the testimonies of citizens that reach us every day, in order to try to figure out what caused the interruption fifteen minutes of silence on Saturday, March 15, in Ulica Kralja Milana. It turns out that the street that separates the plateau in front of the Assembly and Kralj Milan could have a big part in the reconstruction of the events.
A big bottle of wine and wonderful bombs: "The security sector has fallen"
One of the student-guards, who was near Pionirski Park around 19 p.m., but from the opposite side, told "Vreme" that "the student guard sector along the entire stretch from Dragoslav Jovanović to Takwood fell in just a few minutes."
"I was on the spot near the Assembly a few minutes before that 19:11, when the roar started," he remembers. "A few minutes earlier, the guards started to retreat en masse because people with black hoods entered Pionirski Park and started throwing everything and anything from that direction. A shock bomb fell in front of my friend, and then a man approached me and brought a large bottle of wine, which they also threw. It can really hurt. I shook."
At that moment, the student guards began to take off their vests en masse and retreat, as they had agreed to do in advance, in case the area they were trying to secure became unsafe, he added.
"To me, those people from Pionirski Park looked like fans, there were younger guys, about 30 of them, they also threw stones, smoke bombs and torches," he says. "My colleague and I then went and shouted as loud as we could through the megaphone - 'people, go to Slavia as soon as possible'."
Similar people could be seen on the morning of March 15 at "Students who want to learn", and there were far more of them. The question is whether these are the same people who, hours later, started a kind of diversion at the foot of Pionirski Park.
Photo: TimeSmoke bombs and riots
Full speed
Eyewitnesses who wrote to Vremen also saw something similar.
"More and more, we started to hear a loud murmur, simple cheering, shouting, like some shouts, explosions from the other side of the Old Palace and in Pionirski Park," writes one of the citizens who was in Kralja Milana, right near Dragoslav Jovanović Street, in a moment of silence. "I was nervous about it and I looked at the people around. Then there was a loud explosion from the other side, really loud, I guess a loud cannon blast, like a bomb had gone off."
In Kralja Milan, everything was still normal, and people, he adds, were silent and kept their phones in the air.
"A minute later, a group of people, maybe 20 of them, broke into Kralja Milan from Dragoslav Jovanović, they ran at full speed, they started shouting - 'march, the rally is over, run away, everyone', swearing at the people and shooting at the police, who were in that park near Andrićevo venc. As soon as they started running from that side street, people started screaming and running in all directions," said an eyewitness.
At least five other people mentioned in their own statements to "Vremen" that, a few minutes before the end of delivering the mail to the victims, they heard cannon shots, firecrackers or saw flares from the direction of Pionirski Park.
At that same moment, a group of young men attacked the citizens started throwing firecrackers and cannon shots from the construction site "King's Circle Residences", located in the stretch between the Yugoslav Drama Theater and Slavija, on the corner of Kralj Milan and Svetozar Marković.
Why did the BIA mention this street?
And the security services immediately mentioned Dragoslav Jovanović Street on March 16, through the tabloids.
A few hours since "Vreme" published the research, which opened Pandora's box and the main question of what happened on Saturday evening (March 15) at 19:11 happened in Ulica Kralja Milana, BIA offered its version..
Then they published a high-resolution video from the corner of Kralja Milan and Dragoslav Jovanović streets, which shows that some people take off their vests, which are normally worn by the security guards, and begin to retreat, while those gathered around them move to take cover.
It was on this video that they based the theory that the guards started the avalanche that caused the stampede.
This theory is for "Time" commented another student-guard who was in Takovska street during the terrible roar. The warden told "Vreme" that they were probably colleagues fleeing from Pionirski Park.
"A run of ten police officers stuck the whole of Kralj Milan to the walls? Give it to me, please. I can't believe that they will credit us with that - that we destroyed the whole street," the student added. "It's completely insane."
Tension all afternoon.
Near the entrance to Pionirski Park, not far from Dragoslav Jovanović Street, the entire afternoon of March 15th began with riots. Unknown people were hanging around the tractors, which had arrived in the previous days, from 16 p.m., climbing on them and lighting torches on the vehicles. Some of them were driving tractors, and the fuel hoses on many of them were cut. The fuel was leaking, so the street was full of spilled oil along this stretch.
At one point, they sprayed an unknown spray on a tractor, whose engine was running, and people around started to run away because they were caught in a panic. There were people standing next to the security fence who were throwing insults at the gendarmes.
The student-guards asked people to take shelter and head towards Slavia, where the student protest was moved, precisely because of these disturbances.
Photo: TimeGendarmerie right next to Dragoslav Jovanović
In the meantime, the number of gendarmes increased, they also developed a red tape to fence off the tractors, and they allowed the passage of only stewards, journalists, veterans, and there were also plainclothes police. People still got through.
In the end, around 18:30 p.m., the guards and veterans created a buffer zone in an attempt to keep the crowd away from there, which they more or less succeeded in doing. After that, the veterans and bikers left for Terazije around 18:40.
The rest are the guards and hooligans.
