Survivor Has Chilling Account of Concert Massacre

'You never think it will happen to you,' she writes
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 16, 2015 3:17 AM CST
Updated Nov 16, 2015 6:11 AM CST
Survivor Has Chilling Account of Concert Massacre
This frame grab from video provided by "Le Monde" shows the scene Friday outside the Bataclan concert hall in Paris as gunmen attacked it.   (Le Monde via AP)

A 22-year-old survivor has written a chilling—and moving—account of the Bataclan concert massacre in Paris. In a Facebook post that has been shared more than 700,000 times, Isobel Bowdery tells of the horror that unfolded at what started out as a happy Friday night at a rock show, the Washington Post reports. "You never think it will happen to you," she writes, recounting how dozens of people were shot in front of her after gunmen entered the theater, and how she "pretended to be dead for over an hour, lying among people who could see their loved ones motionless." "Cries of grown men who held their [girlfriends'] dead bodies pierced the small music venue," the South African writes. "Futures demolished, families heartbroken ... in an instant."

But Bowdery also tells of the heroes who emerged from the massacre, including the police who saved hundreds, and the man who "reassured me and put his life on [the] line to try and cover my brain whilst [I] whimpered." She does her best to comfort the loved ones of the scores who died, saying that as one who thought she would join them, "I promise that their last thoughts were not on the animals who caused all this. It was thinking of the people they loved." As she waited for a bullet to end her life, "I envisioned every face that I have ever loved and whispered I love you ... over and over again," she writes. "It is up to us to be better people ... to live lives that the innocent victims of this tragedy dreamt about but sadly will now never be able to fulfil [sic]," she concludes. "RIP angels. You will never be forgotten." (Another survivor says his cellphone saved his life.)

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