This Paris attacks survivor also survived 9/11

The 36-year-old managed to crawl to safety when the Bataclan concert hall came under attack


Web Desk November 24, 2015
The 36-year-old managed to crawl to safety when the Bataclan concert hall came under attack. PHOTO: JULILEN DANIEL

An American man who ran for his life through half of Manhattan during the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, ran for his life yet again during the terror attacks in Paris this month.

The 36-year-old who has only been identified as Matthew, managed to crawl to safety when the Bataclan concert hall came under attack. Despite being shot in the leg when Islamic State militants stormed a rock concert at the Bataclan, Matthew crawled as fast as he could to save his life.

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However, this was not the first terrorist attack that Matthew has escaped. During 9/11, Matthew was at the foot of the South Tower of the World Trade Center on his way to a meeting when the first plane struck the North Tower.

"I sprinted across half of Manhattan," he said. "But what I went through in the Bataclan was 1,000 times worse," he added.

On hearing the gunshots at the Bataclan, which many others did not recognise instantly, Matthew ran for the exit. "Perhaps it's my American culture," he said.



Despite being shot in the calf and falling to the floor of the concert hall, which was surrounded with bodies, Matthew managed to inch towards safety each time the attackers reloaded their Kalashnikovs.

"I inched forward centimetre by centimetre. At one point, I saw the ledge of the exit at arm's reach. I was able to grip it with one finger, then the other," Matthew said, as he recalled the incident.

As he emerged from the hall, he collapsed and exhausted onto the street when a journalist, Daniel Psenny, came to his rescue after filming the attack from his flat across the street.

It was Psenny who had caught the footage of a pregnant woman trying to escape the carnage, and had  first started filming without knowledge of the attack.

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Thinking the shooting was over, Psenny opened his front door and spotted Matthew lying on the pavement. He ran over to help him and with the help of another man dressed in black, dragged him to his apartment.

"I was playing dead," Matthew told Le Monde, the newspaper where Psenny is a journalist. "When I felt someone dragging me by the arms, I didn't even look up. I said, or at least in my head – 'I love you, my angel,'" he added.



Matthew may have thought at that point it was over, but as he was being dragged through the doorway of Psenny's building, Psenny was shot in the upper arm. "I felt something warm running down me," Matthew said, "then I heard bad words, and again, shots," he explained further.

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Both men temporarily relied on neighbours and the advice of a doctor over the phone to stem the bleeding. "The bleeding wouldn't stop. Matthew was very pale and vomiting, but we never lost consciousness," Psenny said.



Having lost his phone inside the concert hall, it took Matthew two hours to remember his wife's phone number, who had by chance stayed at home to look after their two children as they had been unable to find a babysitter.

As the attack came to an end, the pair were reunited in hospital, being treated just three rooms apart.

This article originally appeared on Mail Online

COMMENTS (3)

Samuel | 8 years ago | Reply Islamic Militant ? what does that mean ? terrorist have no religion, no country, They are just terrorist ..
Micheal | 8 years ago | Reply So how many more people will die before the killers get to him????// ;-)
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