For Postmedia Canada: Parisians spend the next day remembering the horror of the night before
Nov. 14, 2015
PARIS — Adrien Seguret mistook a series of popping sounds for firecrackers but as the noise drew him closer to the window of his apartment, he realized the true horror unfolding at the Bataclan theatre across the street.
Dozens of people ran from the theatre, some collapsing from gunshot wounds, others trying to take care of the fallen.
As Seguret lay on the floor of his apartment at the insistence of police officers, he did what much of Paris did for the first few hours: call and send text messages to make sure their loved ones were safe.
Around the same time, Jean-Luc was watching TV with his daughter when shots rang out below his apartment at La Belle Equipe restaurant on rue Charonne Friday night.
The first aid responder ushered his daughter to the safety of a bedroom, then grabbed his equipment and ran outside, unprepared for the bloodshed that awaited him.
A day after a series of co-ordinated terror attacks killed 129 people in Paris, witness accounts are painting a clearer picture of what happened at six sites simultaneously throughout the city.
Some recount the experience with a stoic detachment, still in shock from having borne witness to the most violent attacks on France since the Second World War.
Others tell their tale with red-rimmed eyes, sore from tears.
“I came out and there were all these bodies on the ground,” said a teary-eyed Jean-Luc.
