What happened in Paris: The extraordinary individual stories of people who survived the murderous onslaught

After the carnage and chaos of the attacks, extraordinary accounts have emerged of how people survived

This still image made from a smartphone video by Le Monde’s French Journalist Daniel Psenny shows spectators fleeing the Bataclan concert hall (Daniel Psenny / Le Monde)

One couple lived because they had argued and cut their meal short moments before a gunman raked the table where they had been sitting with bullets. A concertgoer at the Bataclan lay pinned under the body of a man killed by a bullet to the head and spent hours playing dead as the attackers methodically picked off the injured and dying …

After the carnage and chaos of the Paris attacks, extraordinary accounts have emerged of how people had survived, some with dogged determination, others thanks to little more than the vagaries of good fortune.

Bataclan, boulevard Voltaire (89 dead)

At the 150-year-old concert venue, Theresa Cede had been enjoying the performance by the American band Eagles of Death Metal when three gunmen shot door staff and forced their way into the venue.

“We heard shots. It was not as loud as you think gun-shots should be,” she told the BBC. “It was like firecrackers … It was machine-gun shots and single shots.

“People dropped on the floor because they wanted to be safe. And other people just dropped because they were hit. I got more or less buried under a man who was shot in the head.

“Then we heard the terrorists shouting. I couldn’t hear because obviously it was a concert so you were a bit numb in the ears. And with the shots you heard even less. ‘Syria’ was in it and then mostly it was ‘You stay down, you don’t move [or] we’ll shoot you.’ But they shot anyway.

“Then it was just an hour of staying down there and not moving. I was trying to see a little bit. I saw one [of the gunmen] up on the balcony. It was a guy completely dressed as a civilian in a T-shirt.

“I just stayed put. I was thinking to myself ‘Is it going to be me next?’ – that’s what went through my head. They were shooting randomly, sporadically. There were grenades, or one grenade at least that I know of. Body parts flying around, people shouting, screaming.

“It lasted a lifetime, an eternity. It was probably an hour. And then eventually there were more shots and then it died down a little bit.

“I had a view to the door where they came in. Through that same door then I had a view of the police force who slowly made their way in. And people were trying to make signs ‘please help’ and ‘get us out of here’.

“At some point [the police] said ‘Whoever can get up, crawl, whatever – out, out, out’. I made my way out of the body mass that I was in and ran out.

“As I lay there, I was thinking not to move. And I was thinking about my family. I had a woman next to me with half her face shot off. The man that covered me was dead immediately. One guy was badly hurt but he was really moaning and complaining so we tried to say ‘Shh, quiet, you’re alive and don’t move’, because every time there was movement somewhere there were more gunshots.”

“For the moment I am just thankful to any guardian angel out there that I am alive.

“It’s scary. I was already scared after Charlie [Hebdo] and I even said a couple of times ‘What’s going to be next?’ I would never have thought that I would be in the midst of that.”

Gauthier, 24, another concertgoer, was grazed by a bullet to the elbow as he tried to reach the exit with the shooters in pursuit: “I think we were about half-way through the concert … my first reaction is ‘This is part of the show?’ Then I saw people begin to fall.

“We found ourselves lying on the ground. You could feel people trying to move forward. So I said to myself ‘Get up and run’. Then I felt the impact on my elbow which knocked me back down. That’s when I saw the three gunmen.

“They were shooting at people in this cold-blooded manner. I have this very clear image in my mind of them shooting and killing people who were on the ground. It was non-stop – they fired and fired and fired.

“At the emergency exit there were lots of people lined up on the ground in a sort of jumble. I could get out my hand but not my body and still I could hear the guy behind me shooting.

“Then I saw this guy, the only thing I remember about him was his red shirt, and he took me by the arms and pulled me out with all his might. People shouted ‘Run, run, run’. So I ran as far as I could.”

Julien Pearce, a journalist at the Europe 1 radio station, crawled into a tiny room next to the stage. From there he could see one of the attackers: “He seemed very young. That’s what struck me, his childish face, very determined, cold, calm, frightening.”

La Belle Equipe, rue de Charonne (19 dead)

Quentin Bongard was with his girlfriend at the brasserie, whch is close to the Bataclan in the 11th arrondissement. “We were sat on the terrace. We had an argument and I left,” he said. “It was lucky we fought because if we hadn’t we would both be dead.

“When I left, my girlfriend went inside because she thought she needed to pay and at that moment these guys arrived and they sprayed [bullets]. She got behind a sofa to protect herself and at the place where we were five minutes earlier, everyone was dead.”

Le Carillon/Le Petit Cambodge, rue Alibert (15 dead)

The café and restaurant were targeted by at least one gunman. Louise Hefez, a doctor at an adjoining hospital, was with colleagues at Le Carillon.

She told Channel 4 News: “We heard the start of the shooting and there was a moment of panic … I was really at the back of the bar – I was very lucky.

“The killers were on the street and started shooting through the glass windows. I was under the table and the shooting was getting louder and louder. It lasted for an eternity but I have no idea how long it was in real minutes. I was just thinking I was going to die under the table.

“There was a moment of shock, of nothingness. We came out from underneath the tables. Then I went a bit further out and saw all the bodies. We were very scared. There were cops, no firemen. I did some cardiac massage to a young man who died under my hands. He was probably dead already.

“This morning I got woken up by the sound of the Métro and I got an anxiety attack because it sounded like the sound of a Kalashnikov firing. I want to resist terror. I don’t want to live in a world where I am scared.”

Casa Nostra, rue de la Fontaine au Roi (five dead)

The pizzeria was busy when a gunman opened fire. Mathieu, 35, said: “There were at least five bodies around me. Others in the street, blood everywhere. I was very lucky.”

Stade de France, St Denis (three bombers dead, one passer-by)

Sylvestre, who had been outside the stadium when suicide bombers set off their devices, held up a mobile phone which he said had taken the impact of lethal shrapnel as he was speaking on it.

“This mobile saved my life,” he said. “Without it I would have got hit in the head. It’s a miracle.”