Moments before the bullets flew, the joyful young faces in the crowd
IT IS a scene of carefree joy at the start of what should have been a fun Friday night out in Paris.
Packed into the Bataclan Concert Hall, some people raise their glasses to the camera, others make the ‘sign of the horns’, popular among rock fans, using their fingers.
As this poignant photograph taken from the front of the venue near the stage where the Eagles of Death Metal performed reveals, there are plenty of smiles, too, as the excitement and anticipation grows for an evening enjoying one of their favourite bands.
The majority of those captured under the concert hall lights are young, in their 20s and 30s, and dressed casually in T-shirts.
There are the latest fashion specs, a smattering of hipster beards. They are the generation about to make an impact on the world — and they should have had their whole lives before them.
But the evening turned into a nightmare of incomprehensible horror when at least three gunmen dressed in black burst in through the doors brandishing semi-automatic weapons and opened fire.
Random slaughter ensued for the next two hours and 40 minutes, leaving 89 of the 1,500 crowd dead.
Among those pictured here, in the second row back peering out from behind the raised arm of a young man in glasses in the front row on the left, is, say friends who have seen the photograph on the internet, Sophie Doran — one of the fans who survived. The 30-year-old pretended to be dead underneath a seat at the theatre while her friend nursed a bullet wound.
Miss Doran, who is originally from Melbourne, Australia, has lived and worked in Paris for several years for Luxury Society, a business network
for the luxury goods industry. She rang her father in tears to tell him she was safe after heavily armed police stormed the venue.
Others who escaped with their lives from the concert have told how the first terrorist bullets came from the back of the hall and have told of seeing ‘a lake of blood and bodies lying everywhere’.
Miss Doran’s father Michael said: ‘From what she tells me, the carnage as it’s described and the bloodbath seem to be an accurate reflection of what they all saw in there.
‘It was a horrible thing, but I’m just pleased my daughter’s alive. My sympathies go out to those people whose daughters and sons and brothers aren’t alive.’
Miss Doran’s friend was wounded, Mr Doran told the ABC television channel in Australia, but has been discharged from hospital.
Yesterday, more chilling accounts emerged of the horrific scenes which unfolded at the concert as the merciless gunmen opened fire.
Writer Nicolas Stanzick, who was there with his wife, told Paris Match: ‘We stayed down, face to the ground, in the middle of the hall. The shoe of a man on the ground in front of me was touching my face. He was hit by a bullet. We kept pretending to be dead. Valerie, my wife, said, “We’re next.” I answered, “Shut up. We’re going to survive. Don’t even think about getting up.”
‘We were holding hands and thinking of Joseph, our kid. People were falling all around us. Then, it got really horrible. There were rifle bursts, but the shots were spaced out. The terrorists were shooting on anyone who moved, one by one. We could hear them reload their Kalashnikovs, it was terrifying.’
At the rear left of the photograph can just be seen a stall selling T-shirts. Nick Alexander, 36, of Colchester Essex, a much-loved figure on the heavy metal circuit, who made his living selling rock merchandise, was killed.