Promising lives lost at Le Bataclan hall
PARIS: They were lawyers, engineers, journalists, corporate executives. If they hadn’t been fans of a California band called The Eagles of Death Metal, they would still be alive.
The victims of Friday’s Le Bataclan concert hall attacks in Paris embodied some of France’s best hopes for its future. As details become available about the more than 89 people killed there, a profile is emerging: mostly well-educated, accomplished people in their 20s, 30s and early 40s.
“They were young professionals, doing well in life,” said Amandine Panhard, whose cousin died in the attack. Her cousin, Pierre-Antoine Henry, was an engineer and father of two young daughters. “They killed the nicest guy in the world,” she said.
The Eagles of Death Metal plays a mix of bluegrass, blues and rock. Its heavymetal name “is a sort of a joke”, Ms Panhard said, and the band has a loyal following in France among intellectuals and music connoisseurs.
Others who died at the Bataclan, according to their employers’ websites or twitter accounts of their families and friends: Valentin Ribet, 26, a Paris attorney with the UK-American law firm Hogan Lovells. He had graduated from the Sorbonne and had a master’s degree in international business law from the London School of Economics.
Guillaume Decherf, 43, a music journalist who wrote about the band and was an announcer at the Bataclan performance. Chilean Elsa Delplace was a management consultant specialising in cultural events with a master’s degree from the Institut Superieur des Arts and was an accomplished cellist.
FranCois-Xavier Prevost, 29, an advertising executive who had recently become head of advertising for Local-Media in the city of Lille.