A man who lost his family in the Kemerovo fire says he knows why the movie theater's doors were locked

Dozens of children died in the Kemerovo fire on Sunday because the doors were locked at the movie theater in which they were trapped. According to Igor Vostrikov, a random adult shut the doors and plugged the cracks, trying to keep smoke out of the screening rooms, in hopes that rescuers would reach the children before the flames did.

In a video shared on Vkontakte, Vostrikov says he knows this because he was granted access to the shopping center’s security camera footage. The man who sealed the doors supposedly escaped the fire. In his video, Vostrikov accused the firefighters of failing in the line of duty.

Who is Igor Vostrikov?

He’s the man who lost his wife, his sister, and his three children in the fire. Vostrikov was one of the people who organized a 10-hour protest outside the Kemerovo administrative building on Tuesday, and he’s also part of the civic group that accuses the authorities of hiding Sunday’s “true” death toll. This same group met briefly with Vladimir Putin, who told Kemerovo residents not to believe rumors and fake news circulating online.