ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — The 14 people who died in a terrorist attack on the St. Petersburg subway were a cross section of the city, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There was a famous doll maker whose creations with often crazy hair were beloved by collectors, and who apparently saved her daughter’s life by shielding her as a bomb erupted deep underground around 2:40 p.m. on Monday.

There was a young wrestling coach adored by his team. When he did not appear for practice as scheduled and did not answer his cellphone, people posted pictures of him and his distinctive tattoos on social media, refusing to believe that he could have been swept away so suddenly and so young.

There were many students — some finished for the day, some playing hooky, many making plans that were abruptly, catastrophically cut short.

“I feel lost now,” said Mikhail A. Veprentsev, 18, one of more than 60 people injured, summing up the mood of those whose loved ones died and those who made it out of the subway train that was struck by a young suicide bomber. “I am just glad I was alone, without friends or relatives.”

Continue reading the main story

The doll maker, Irina Medyantseva, 50, was not alone. She and her grown daughter Yelena, also a doll designer, had just boarded the third carriage of the train at Sennaya Station when the terrorist struck. Relatives told Komsomolskaya Pravda, a tabloid, that the mother had protected the daughter, who ended up in intensive care.

Mrs. Medyantseva was famous in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and imperial capital, for making dolls for the past 15 years. Her creations sported big eyes, big grins and droopy clothes, a little vulnerable and a little unconventional. Photographs of Mrs. Medyantseva showed her in her garden or donning big glasses to look a bit like one of her dolls.

“Catastrophe,” wrote her husband, Alexander Kaminsky, on his page on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. “I’ve lost my beloved wife.” After the explosion, his daughter called him briefly to recount what happened before she was whisked to the hospital.

The wrestling coach, Denis R. Petrov, 25, had been an assistant coach for children at a club called Warrior since September. He was a stocky blond with numerous tattoos — a dark blue Polynesian design across one shoulder, English phrases up both forearms and burst of color on his right wrist.

His left arm read “Better to reign,” while the right said, “Step by Step.”

He had called in the morning to say he would be there around 3 p.m., and when he did not appear, his colleagues began making a series of frantic telephone calls to try to find him. “We didn’t want to believe that he had died,” one told the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Kirill Mikhailov, the father of one of the children he coached, wrote on Mr. Petrov’s Vkontakte page, “My son’s wrestling coach and simply a good person Denis Romanovich Petrov died in the terrorist attack in the Petersburg metro, he was all of 25 years old!!! He will remain in our memories forever!”

Dilbara S. Aliyeva was one of the students killed. She was in her third year at Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University. On its website, the university announced the death and reported that 12 more of its students were injured.

Ms. Aliyeva — whose pictures show a woman with long black hair — was studying at the faculty of economics and management. She wanted to become a psychologist, the statement said.

“Like any girl, she had friends, was making big plans, loved life,” it said. Ms. Aliyeva was originally from Baku, Azerbaijan, but had moved to St. Petersburg with her family and completed high school there.

Another student, Maksim Aryshev, 19, a native of Kazakhstan, was so close to the blast that at first there were reports — given the fears about suicide attackers from Central Asia — that he had been the bomber.

Mr. Aryshev, a third-year student at St. Petersburg State University of Economics, wanted to be a programmer. A classmate described him to the Meduza news website as cheerful and sociable, a man who loved to joke and the life of any party.

There was at least one mystery among the dead. Angelina Svistunova, 27, described as the wife of a military man, was said to have spent most days at home. Her family was mystified as to why she was on the metro in the middle of the day, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Finally, there was the bomber himself: Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, 22, a member of the Uzbek minority in the troubled city of Osh, in southern Kyrgyzstan, who came to St. Petersburg six years ago after obtaining Russian citizenship through his father.

He blossomed into a car mechanic. About the only signs of radicalization were a few links to Islamist websites on his social media pages, and one source told Interfax that he seemed to have returned from a rare visit home in February a changed man — sullen and withdrawn.

How he became radicalized — yet another in a line of lone wolves that have left a bloody trail around the globe — is part of the investigation. His father and mother arrived in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to identify the body and to speak with investigators. “I do not believe it,” was all the mother told reporters upon arrival, according to Interfax.

The names of the deceased have dribbled out slowly; the list was still incomplete by Wednesday morning, and the families were supposed to begin receiving their remains later in the day. Their relatives, as well as the injured, were mostly being shielded from public view at the various hospitals to which they were admitted. Dozens remained hospitalized.

Mr. Veprentsev, lying under a blanket at City Hospital No. 26 in St. Petersburg, answered a steady stream of telephone calls from friends inquiring about his health.

The young man was injured after he decided at the last minute to skip an afternoon class and go back home, dashing across the platform to the fateful train.

He was in an adjacent car when the door blew in on him. “I was shocked. I threw the door away from me and began to crawl through this whole mess,” he said. The dead around him had screws sticking out of their heads, he said, apparently part of the shrapnel in the bomb.

At first he went home, but, feeling ill, he was taken to the hospital by a friend. Doctors determined he had a concussion, multiple injuries, trauma inside his chest and glass injuries across his back.

Opposite him in the same tiny room, also under a blanket, lay Konstantin Y. Kolodkin, 40, a well-built man with a dark mustache who installs car alarms for a living. He had been on the way home from work and said he did not remember which car he had entered when suddenly there was a blast.

“I jumped out of the car like the cork out of bottle,” he said, then walked around dazed for while before going to the hospital, where he was found to have a concussion and multiple injuries.

“The car was full. I would say about 70 percent full for sure, students going home or going to classes,” said Mr. Kolodkin, who repeatedly criticized the government security measures that let a bomber slip through. “I just don’t know how I will be able to go down to use the metro again.”

Quote Ends.