‘We saw people clutching their babies and running as fast as they could’
The screaming of horrified families is Toronto political consultant Ramiro Mora remembers most vividly about the truck attack in Nice on Thursday night that killed 84 people.
Mora, 38, was on the Promenade des Anglais with his wife, enjoying the fireworks by the Mediterranean in a mass celebration of Bastille Day, the French national holiday.
“It was packed,” Mora said in a phone interview from Nice. “Tens of thousands of people. We were watching the fireworks.”
“It was festive. It was Bastille night. It’s Nice,” he said. “We were there for the whole day. It was a family day. It was a holiday.”
Once the fireworks ended, they strolled along the Promenade toward their hotel as a DJ started to entertain revelers.
“All of a sudden we heard all of these screams behind us,” Mora said. “We looked back and we saw people clutching their babies and running as fast as they could to get away. “We started running with them.” Members of the screaming crowd attempted to flee up narrow streets off the Promenade as a truck plowed through the crowd, killing 84 people.
The truck zigzagged for two kilometres near Nice’s Palais de la Méditerranée, which overlooks the beach.
“I’ll never forget some of those images,” Mora said. “The sheer terror, people clutching their babies.”
Canada’s ambassador to France, Lawrence Cannon, tweeted that there are “no Canadians reported among casualties to date.”
The morning after the attack, Mora couldn’t stop thinking about the contrast between the beauty and serenity of families watching the fireworks over the Mediterranean with the chaos that followed.
It was an unreal feeling for Mora to step out of his hotel on Friday morning, and see shops and restaurants were open again.
“Life is continuing,” Mora said. “We’re going to stay.”