It was supposed to be a “typical Friday night” of going to dinner with friends for Global News online journalist Carmen Chai.
But when shots rang out in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, a night of friendly socializing became a night of panic and terror.
Chai was getting ready to go out and join her friends who were waiting for a table. It was then that gunshots were fired at a nearby restaurant.
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“Everyone just started scrambling and people had to pull them and say like, ‘Drop your drinks and just run.’ So they just ran with the crowd and they were really just petrified and shaken,” Chai said, who was visiting Paris during a personal trip at the time. She added that she tried to comfort her friends after they returned home.
“I just won’t forget how they were – like they wouldn’t sit down and just really panicky.”
In all, 130 victims were killed during the co-ordinated attacks at several restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall.
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Amid the flurry of messages from Chai’s friends and family asking if she was OK, she recalled hearing the noise from the streets and helicopters in the air as she listened to the news broadcasts covering the attacks.
“The sound was matching. What you would hear on the radio was what you were hearing outside too – that’s how close to it we were,” she said, noting many people opened their doors to protect fellow residents and visitors.
“I felt safe in my home … No one was going to let a friend get back onto the Metro to go home that night, no one was going to let a friend take an Uber home that night – everyone was staying inside where you would hypothetically be protected.”
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After falling asleep at around 6 a.m. the following morning, Chai woke up a couple of hours later and went to the areas where the shootings occurred to take photos.
“We’ve covered shootings and other attacks in other parts of the world that you aren’t so familiar with, but when it becomes your home it definitely has a different layer,” she said.
Chai said although the events “didn’t really stop people from living,” she remembered having to take off coats and open bags for security checks shortly after the attacks so much that it became “second nature.”
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“That was really weird for me. I couldn’t believe that it became so normal for me,” Chai said.
She added she has thought about the “what-ifs” if the timing was different on that Friday night one year ago.
“There are always hypothetical questions as to how the night would have played out if it had played out a different way, so yeah that’s definitely crossed our minds.”