‘I Heard This Roaring Sound’: Woman Describes Surviving Attack Inspired by Terrorgram Collective
On the evening of Oct. 12, 2022, Radka Trokšiarová and two of her friends sat talking outside Tepláreň, an LGBTQ+ bar they frequented in Bratislava, Slovakia.
“Tepláreň was a free and safe harbor for me,” Trokšiarová says in the video above. “Many people found their second family there, especially those not out to their families.”
So when she saw someone standing in the shadows that night, not far from the bar, Trokšiarová recalls saying hello to him.
“First, we thought he was standing there because he was maybe also queer, just too shy to come in,” she says.
He had come there with a different plan.
In the above video, drawn from the new FRONTLINE/ProPublica documentary The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram, Trokšiarová describes what happened that night as the man pulled out a gun and aimed directly at her and her two friends, Matúš Horváth and Juraj Vankulič.
“There was no chance. I heard this roaring sound of nine shots that blended into one,” says Trokšiarová. “The only thing I know is that Juraj fell down just in front of us, and Matúš, as he was shot, fell against me, taking us both down.”
The shooter, 19-year-old Juraj Krajčík, fired twice more. Horváth and Vankulič were killed; Trokšiarová had been shot twice in the leg.
The attacker fled into the night and later killed himself. As The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram explores, earlier that day, he had posted a hate-filled manifesto online claiming that white people were facing a “critical situation” and that Jews and gay people should be eliminated. Slovak authorities believed he was a so-called lone wolf, and that no one else had been involved in the attack. But as the documentary goes on to examine, the manifesto contained clues that, in fact, the young shooter had been radicalized by a global community of online extremists who encouraged him to commit an act of 21st-century terror.
READ MORE: Inside a Global Online Hate Network
“The Bratislava attack is important because it’s a pure example of how influencers today can encourage and inspire other people to go out and commit acts of terrorism,” A.C. Thompson, a correspondent on the documentary along with his ProPublica colleague James Bandler, says in the above video. “It explains and shows how terrorism works today.”
The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram continues years of groundbreaking reporting on violent extremism and online radicalization from FRONTLINE and ProPublica. Premiering March 25 on PBS and online, and directed by acclaimed filmmakers Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong, the 90-minute documentary traces the migration of extremism across various digital platforms over the years, from 4chan to 8chan to eventually Telegram — a haven for the Terrorgram Collective, the transnational online network of extremists linked to the Bratislava attack and accused of inciting acts of white supremacist terrorism.
Authorities in several countries, including the U.S., would eventually arrest around a dozen people allegedly tied to Terrorgram — including a Slovakian and two Americans whom the investigative team reports may have helped groom the Bratislava shooter to kill.
READ MORE: How the Terrorgram Collective’s Neo-Nazi Influencers Groomed a Teen to Kill
Telegram says it has always screened postings for problematic content and that “Calls for violence from any group are not tolerated on our platform.”
Ultimately, the documentary and related reporting examine what the Terrorgram Collective’s rise and fall suggests about the evolution of far-right extremism on loosely-moderated tech platforms in a rapidly changing digital age.
In the meantime, for Radka Trokšiarová, questions remain.
“I don’t see into the heads of radicals. What in their brain tells them to load a gun and fire at people? I just don’t get it,” she says in the documentary.
“Someone incited him into doing the wrong thing and he followed,” she adds. “The question is, why?”
The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram will be available to watch at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App starting March 25, 2025, at 7/6c. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings), at propublica.org and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c and will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram is a FRONTLINE production with 2over10 Media in association with ProPublica. The directors are Thomas Jennings and Annie Wong. The producers are Annie Wong, Thomas Jennings and A.C. Thompson. The writers are Thomas Jennings & A.C. Thompson. The co-producers are Karina Meier and Fanny Lee. The correspondents are A.C. Thompson and James Bandler. The senior producer is Dan Edge. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
