PARIS — Etienne Faux watched in horror from his apartment window: a single gunman unleashed fire onto the streets of Paris, killing at least 10 people.
While Faux, 20, could see the gunfire and hear the screams, he didn’t understand what he was witnessing.
“It was chaos. I saw everyone running down the street, I saw the bodies and didn’t know if they were dead or still alive,” he told Global News Saturday morning just outside of Le Carillon and Le Petit Cambodge, one of a handful of the locations in which grisly attacks took place across the city.
“I felt so scared, I felt so afraid. I opened my window and saw it was a killer, saw the guys falling, but still didn’t realize in the moment,” he said.
French officials said Friday night’s attacks were the deadliest on French soil since the Second World War. At least 120 people died in a series of attacks on at least two restaurants, a soccer stadium and a packed concert hall, the Bataclan, where hostages were taken.
By Saturday morning, locals returned to the streets. National police vans lined the streets, as armed officers patrolled neighbourhoods.
Several areas in the third district were cordoned off with police tape — while a major shooting took place between the two restaurants on Rue Bichat, handfuls of shootings were also reported in the vicinity.
At Place de la Republique, where thousands came together to hold candlelight vigils and gatherings following shootings at the offices of Charlie Hebdo last January, locals placed flowers, candles, and flags. One man, who only provided his first name — Alexandre, made two rows of 60 tea lights.
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“More than 120 people died last night. We don’t visualize it, but with this it might help,” he said.
By 1 p.m., hundreds of people filled the square.
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International media, along with curious residents, also flooded Rue Bichat between Le Petit Cambodge and Le Carillon. Police tape lined the restaurants, along with bouquets of flowers and teddy bears. Others took snapshots of the bullet holes in the restaurants’ window panes, and the outline of chalk on the ground.
It was a sombre scene: people holding hands and praying, wiping away tears and leaving behind candles and trinkets where at least 10 people lost their lives.
Those who live in the neighbourhood couldn’t believe it was a shooting at first. And if they did, they thought it was a one-off event.
“It wasn’t until we turned on the news and saw that it was bigger. We used to go there for drinks, some beer. And now we don’t understand what happened,” Delphine Wald-Lecourt told Global News.
Faux called his roommate immediately to tell him not to return home.
“He thought I was telling him a joke,” Faux said. It wasn’t until another shooting occurred nearby the bar his roommate was at that reality sunk in.
Thoughts of the shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo are seeping into locals’ minds.
“Days and weeks after it, there was another atmosphere. It was gloomy. Today it’s more than that, we are heartbroken. It’s incomprehension,” Wald-Lecourt said.
But she says that the French shouldn’t be afraid.
“Of course, a lot of people were killed, but we have to be strong, we have to be there for other people,” she told Global News.
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