According to press reports, he made a valiant last stand on the first floor of the consulate armed only with a revolver. In close quarters combat, he dispatched three Chekist soldiers before he was in turn killed and his corpse mutilated. Eyewitnesses, such as the sister-in-law of Red Cross nurse Mary Britnieva, asserted that Cromie was shot by the Cheka while retreating down the consulate's grand staircase. The Cheka detachment searched the building and, with their rifle butts, repelled the diplomatic staff from getting close to the corpse of Captain Cromie which the Chekist soldiers had looted and trampled. The Cheka detachment then arrested over forty persons who had sought refuge within the British consulate, as well as seized weapon caches and compromising documents which they claimed implicated the consular staff in the forthcoming coup attempt. Cromie's death was publicly "depicted as a measure of self-defence by the Bolshevik agents, who had been forced to return his fire".