Pregnant Woman Reunites With Bataclan Rescuer

Man pulled her up from window ledge; both escaped
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 17, 2015 9:42 AM CST
Pregnant Woman Reunites With Bataclan Rescuer
This Friday, Nov. 13, 2015, frame grab from video provided by Le Monde, shows the scene outside the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, as gunmen attacked it.   (Le Monde via AP)

One of many terrifying images from Friday's Paris attacks was of a pregnant woman dangling from a window of the Bataclan. Now, a friend of the unidentified woman says she survived and has been in touch with the man who helped save her. A man identified only as Sebastien says he was forced to crawl across bodies while trying to escape the theater and came across two windows. "A woman was hanging from one of them, she was pregnant and was pleading with the people below her to catch her if she jumped. Below it was chaos," he tells La Provence, per the Local. Sebastien says he climbed through the other window and clung to a vent about 50 feet above the ground. "I held on for five minutes and then the pregnant woman, who was exhausted, asked me to help her get back inside. And that is what I did," he says, per Sky News.

A video (warning: contains disturbing scenes) captured part of the rescue, but Sebastien says he didn't know where the woman went afterward. He found a hiding place inside the theater but was quickly discovered. "I felt the barrel of a Kalashnikov against my leg," he says, per the Guardian, adding that he was forced to lie on the floor as gunmen fired from a balcony. He heard them say they wanted to make others suffer like those in Syria, and watched as concertgoers were shot and killed. He escaped when police raided the building. "I was trampled but it was the happiest pain of my life. I was protected. I was alive," he says. A friend of the pregnant woman tweeted that the woman is fine. "We have found the man who saved my friend," he adds, per the Local. "The rest of the story is theirs." (Another survivor recalls the horror, heroes, and "cries of grown men.")

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X