An American man, who calls himself Matthew, without revealing his last name, has confessed that the Bataclan theater massacre in Paris in not the first terrorist attack he has actually lived through.
The 36-year-old was shot in the leg on Friday night while watching Eagles of Death Metal at the Bataclan.
Le Monde's reporter and the American he saved on 11/13 outside Bataclan concert hall meet again in a hospital room https://t.co/G5u5RBGrAG
— Sylvie Kauffmann (@SylvieKauffmann) 19 ноября 2015
He then told French newspaper Le Monde how he managed to drag himself along the floor outside the emergency exit and finally reach the street.
“I pretended to be dead. When I felt being shot in the arm, I didn’t even look,” he recalls.
“I moved forward centimetre by centimetre. Then I felt the edge of the exit by my hand. I gripped it with one finger, then another.”
He was then recovered by Daniel Psenny, Le Monde journalist, who lives nearby the Bataclan and who filmed the dramatic video of people jumping out from the building as the terrorists were attacking the audience, having killed 89 people.
“When I felt someone dragging me by the arms, I didn’t even look up. I said, or at least in my head – ‘I love you, my angel,’” he recalled.
Once in a hospital, Matthew heartedly thanked his savior once again: “I couldn’t say anything. I told him again he was my angel.”
Matthew survived both 9/11 and 11/13 https://t.co/PHDtjk8VmH
— 9/11 Rescuer (@911Advocate) 20 ноября 2015
However what comes as a more of a surprise is that the man has already been lucky to have one narrow escape before.
Matthew was on the road below the World Trade Center when a plane smashed into the iconic building back in 2001.
“I ran across nearly half of Manhattan. But what I saw at the Bataclan was a thousand times worse,” he emotionally recalled.
Matthew moved to Paris with his family this July.