A South Florida family is sharing their survival story from Barcelona.
Thursday, a terrorist attack there killed 14 people including one American after a van drove through a crowd of people.
Friday, they flew back to Miami to tell their story.
A photo taken at 1:55 p.m., Barcelona time,Thursday shows the Ritkes family. Charlie, Veronica, Beau, Justin, dad Gary and mom Sonia inside a church. They’re smiling.
“It was amazing being at that church, we got to pray a little, which is kind of funny, right? We got to pray not knowing what was going to happen,” Sonia says.
At 4:15 p.m. Veronica sees something that's not right.
“(Veronica) starts screaming at two men. ‘Get away from my mother, get away from my mother!’ And when I looked they were under my seat trying to rob my bag,” Sonia said.
At 4:40 p.m., another photo shows the family talking to police, discussing the attempted robbery.
“All of a sudden the police start running. I mean charging like you've never seen and we're like oh my god. That was it, then you heard the madness,” Sonia says.
“We don't know what happened. We thought it could have been gunshots,” Beau says.
“You get this adrenaline that you run faster than you've ever ran before,” Veronica says.
“As soon as the screaming started, I was able to pretty much get a sight on everyone, except Charlie. I knew he wasn't with us,” Gary says.
“In that chaos I got stuck on a pillar. My face got hit on the side, which I broke my glasses, until my dad grabbed me and saved me and brought me into a restaurant,” Charlie says.
It was just after 5 when the family finally reunited. They were surrounded by strangers consoling each other, thankful to be alive considering this.
"So had we not been detained because of my purse, we would have started walking out in the main street and we would have been probably hit,” Sonia says.
The family is from Weston in Broward County. They don't plan on taking another trip anytime soon.
