"ARE WE SAFE HERE? ARE WE NOT SAFE HERE?"

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Julia: You go to bed, wake up the next morning, think, "Okay, well was it true what happened last night?" You turn on the TV again and it's the same footage, again and again and again.

Andy: When the stampede happened, I looked at those stairs and I said, "Andrew, go, now."

Kevin: [French]

Kevin: I remember that it was a Friday and that I was really happy because it my first two weeks of vacation since I had arrived at the beginning of September in my unit. For my vacation I hadn't planned a lot of things besides getting some rest, taking a break, getting some exercise, just normal things.

Andy: In general I was excited about the day. I was excited, I'd never done this before where I'd hoped on a train just to go to a soccer game. This was a 12 hour trip there and back to watch two really cool teams play each other. It was a friendly game but it was pretty much me against my friend who lives in Paris, kind of a fun rivalry to share for this game.

Julia: I woke up that day I probably thought, "Oh my God, I have to go to work." I had just had a big, major change in my job. I felt like I was not good enough to help my team so I felt a lot overwhelmed with work. I guess I was really looking forward to that date end because we had planned to go to Berlin. I had taken a day off on the Monday, so three days to Berlin. It was I guess what I was thinking of on the Friday morning.

Andy: When I arrived at work that day I didn't really care too much about work. Pretty much I was just waiting for that clock to hit noon so I could bust out and head to my train. I'm pretty sure I thought this was the most important game on the face of the planet. The president of France was going to be there and also it's France/Germany, people make a big deal out of it. I'd say especially the French. My name is Andy [Nonheimer 00:02:39], I'm an architect and I live in Wiesbaden, Germany, with my wife and young son.

Kevin: My name is Kevin, I'm a police officer. I'm from a little town in the countryside, outside of Chartres, but at that time I lived in the 12th arrondissement, I was between Gare de Lyon and Bastille. I don't have a lot of memories of that day because I was mainly focused on the end of the day.

Julia: My name's Julia. I'm 30 years old and I live in the 11th district in Paris. I work for a small business travel company. Getting off the metro and about to get into the building at work I guess I was starting to feel that knot in my belly, like, "Ugh, I don't want to go there. It's going to be another shitty day." But you know, it's Friday again, it's let's do it and then it's over with, just hoping that I'm not going to spend 10 hours at work and hopefully be in time for dinner tonight.

Andy: My first setting my friends was in Gare de Lyon. They were coming from another train station and came in through the side entry. We held up our phones to each other and just laughed. There were actually three of us going to the game, me, my friend who lives in Paris and a third friend of ours who was passing through on his whirlwind tour of the world and timed it perfectly to stop in Paris and go to this game with us.

Julia: At the end of the day, it's quite late, but I'm happy because I'm going to the restaurant with friends and then the next day we were off to a long weekend that was well deserved. Yeah, I guess I was relieved that day after work.

Andy: The problem with being at a good café in a good restaurant is you lose track of the time, so we just kept eating. Then we look at our watch and I think it was like 7:15, 7:30. We said, "Shoot, by the time we get on the metro, head down to the stadium, walk fast, we'll be at the game maybe at kickoff."

Kevin: One of my friends, Nico, threw a party to celebrate the weekend in his tiny, tiny apartment. Actually I go to his house so often that I know his entry code by heart. So I didn't have to get buzzed in. I put in his entry code, I went in the building, I went towards his door and I just kept knocking, knocking, knocking, going, "Open up, open up, open up," like I normally do.

Andy: When we got off the train I could see the lights of the stadium. That's something always that's hit me, when I can see the stadium, when I can see the lights. That's when I really get psyched. All we're hearing is cheering and people yelling in French, and a few yelling in German back, so that was exciting. The stadium was packed, it was sold out. There was 80,000 people at this game. We're minutes to kickoff. They're going to do the coin toss. The captains are going to shake hands. We got to our seats, we look at each other and say, "We're here." The crowd is in a frenzy. Yeah, the mood was good.

Julia: It was a small restaurant, not a lot of light, the atmosphere was nice. We were seated apart from each other, two tables of two. I guess girls seated next to each other and facing the boys. Then I remember Bertrand, he's always on is phone watching the push notifications from the sports app. He's a big fan of soccer, it's okay he does that all the time, but then the look on his face, it was starting to get a little bit worrying because, yeah, he started getting push notifications from that newspaper app, Le Monde. Ngofeen: We found out from Pierre's sister who sent him a text message. Saying, "Listen, are you okay?" We all looked at each other and we're like, "Your sister's kind of weird. Why is she asking that?" He asked, "Yeah I'm fine. I'm at Nico's place. Why?" She says, "Listen, it sounds like there might be something going on in Paris, apparently there might be an attack."

Julia: First one was, okay, there's a shooting in Paris, and then we got a little bit more details, there's a shooting in the 11th district. You're like, "Okay, that's where we live." Then I guess the news that we had was, "Okay, there's actually several shootings now and there's 11 dead already."

Andy: During the first half, maybe about, I don't remember when it was, 15, 20 minutes in, there was a big boom. It sounded like a firework. It really did. It sounded like an M-80, it sounded like somebody either outside the stadium or even in the stadium had lit a firework and went boom. The crowd kind of went, "Ooh." My friends and I looked at each other and it was like, "Maybe it was a firework." The crowd was excited, everybody was in a good mood still, the first half wasn't that old, and then the second one happened. That one shook your chest, like when you're at a rock concert and the drummer hits the bass drum and you feel that in your chest. That's exactly what that sounded like and what it felt like. The problem was on the second boom we saw a bunch of security take off running.

Kevin: We didn't know at all how many attacks there were and where in Paris. We knew that there were some in the 11th arrondissement. We knew that there had been attacks, there had been explosions at Saint Denis, the soccer stadium, but we didn't know if there would be other in Paris. There was this sense of tension which then turned into fear. No one else in the apparlement wanted to go outside. It was the tension of learning that these things were happening and that we were a part of it all.

Andy: At halftime that's when the shit hit the fan. Immediately phones started going off. My friend got a flurry of text. I could hear ringing around me. People in the stadium started finding out what was happening outside the stadium, about the hostage situation, about the shootings at the restaurants.

Julia: I guess it's when my mom called. She wouldn't usually call me after 9:00. She was a bit stressed. She was like, "Where are you? Because we're in front of the TV and they're saying that there's a shooting in Paris. Where are you?" "Well mom, we're just at a restaurant. Don't worry mom, we're good. It's probably nothing."

Andy: We didn't see it but there were reports from people in the stadium that said at halftime the president immediately left. That might have even happened before but I remember that everybody was saying, "Yeah, he left and he left in a hurry." People were focusing and concentrating on, "Okay, what do we do when we go home? What's the deal with public transit?" Because towards the end of the game we got word that the entire metro was shut down, that they stopped the metro. That's when I told Andrew, I said, "They can't do that, there's 80,000 people here at the stadium."

Julia: Maybe it was just me but I was trying to catch other people's looks in the restaurant, trying to figure out if they were aware of what we knew and what's going on. It seemed like they were all just having normal dinner. Then I tried to look at the waitress and waiters, and even them seemed in the rush of their job. It felt a little bit unreal. We seemed to be the only ones who knew and started to feel a little bit anxious about it.

Kevin: I was super frustrated and I only wanted to do one thing, which was leave. Everyone started yelling at me because at a certain point I was like, "I can't stay here. I can't stay here knowing what's happening and just stay here. I can't, it's not possible." Then all five of them basically started yelling at me, saying, "Yeah, I understand but you have to stay." They were saying, "It's too dangerous. You can't go. You don't even have your gun. You don't know what's happening. You won't even be able to get there by yourself." I was really frustrated, I wanted to do whatever I could to get there to help at least. At least to help all the wounded, they needed a hand. Julia: We didn't really know what we were going to do. We didn't know if we would be able to catch the metro because from the latest news there was a shooting that was still going on at Oberkampf metro station. That's on line nine, which is our line to get back home. What do we do? Do we take a Uber or do we walk home?

Andy: Are we safe here? Are we not safe here? They're obviously continuing to play the game.

Julia: But it was like a good hour walk so we decided, "Okay, let's try and catch a metro home, we'll see."

Kevin: The street was super-calm. It was actually disturbing. I’ve never seen the neighborhood so quiet. I think everything was stuck to their TVs or their computers to get the news.

Andy: The last thing that happened was we didn't actually leave until the game ended. When the game ended immediately there was announcements that the public transit system had been shut down in the center of Paris but that train were still running from the stadium. What we did is we left the stadium, we walked down and we were walking down the steps of one of the big staircases coming down from the stadium. We were supposed to meet Micah, he was actually sitting in another part of the stadium and we had arranged a specific location for us to meet afterwards. If you can imagine a large plaza that's raised above the street, where you're blocked in on three sides and there's only one direction to run and that direction narrows. Andrew and I were already there waiting.

We were waiting for about five minutes and then all of a sudden we heard a couple small bangs, what sounded like firecrackers maybe, and then we saw people running. We found ourselves literally in the middle of a stampede. It literally went from zero to 60 in about three seconds, where people started running and started screaming. At this point your mind is racing, you have no idea what's going on. Is there a shooter? Is there a bomb? We already heard everything that was happening around Paris, you have no idea. Because of that I'm going through in my mind, I'm really saying, "Oh shit, this is where people die."

Julia: We started feeling like there was real danger coming out of that restaurant so we caught one metro but the metro was very slow and we could see that out of the nine stops three were marked red. They wouldn't stop, Strasbourg-St. Denis, Republique and Oberkampf, so obviously three stations where that thing was happening, we knew from the news. I remember everyone on the metro seemed again not aware of what was going on. Then at a moment I remember this guy, a French guy saying, "34 now." Just that. He was alone. I guess he was on his phone. In my mind I'm like, "34, could it be that now the news is saying there's 34 dead people?"

Andy: Before the game I noticed sets of stairs exiting this plaza. They were really discrete, really hard to see. If you were in a stampede you would never notice them because you'd be panicking. When the stampede happened I looked at those stairs and I said, "Andrew go, now." I don't think I've ever gripped somebody so hard in my life by the arm, because we didn't want to get separated. I had nowhere else to go and didn't know what to do. When 5,000 people are running across a plaza you're never going to find the person if you lose them.

We were able to make our way down the flight of stairs relatively quickly and then we were in an open street. Then it was like, "Oh my God, where's Mika? Do we really want to go back up to the plaza?" Because that's where we have to go to meet him and that's what we said. We ended up waiting about another 10 minutes and then made our way up to the plaza again. Sure enough he was standing at the poles, like nothing had ever happened. He had no idea that there had been a stampede. It was started and over that fast.

Julia: When we finally get to Charonne, our metro stop, we got off. I remember being a little bit anxious because it supposedly was happening in the neighborhood, we didn't really know what it was. We walk up to the street and then it was just empty. Nothing. You couldn't hear anything really. Empty and dark.

Kevin: I wanted to go to do my job, to reassure people. But they were asking me to stay. And I did stay, to be clear. But it was also to do my job. I think that the fact I was there and that I was a police officer was reassuring, even though concretely I wasn’t doing anything. Except boiling inside. The only thing I did was go get some beers.

Andy: We ended up getting on the train and that took us to the stop right before they closed the middle city stops in Paris. We got out and from there we were going to walk to a friend of Andrew's who had an apartment there. We were going to spend the night because we had nowhere else to go and we actually couldn't get home. What was really scary is during our walk, you're walking through Paris streets which are supposed to be romantic and nice and lit well, we saw SWAT. We saw French SWAT, French special police in firing positions, in tactical positions on the street, clearing buildings and motioning us to hurry up and walk. These quiet Paris streets are these beautiful romantic Paris streets that we're supposed to be walking down are actually terrifying alleyways where people could jump out or shoot or kill or do whatever they want in an instant.

Julia: Anyway, we rushed to the apartment. When we got there it was probably around 11:30pm. The first thing we did was turn on the TV for the news channel, live news channel, and try and figure out what had happened and what was still happening. That's when we realized that a block away from our house there had been a shooting and I guess more than 10 people died at the restaurant. We kept watching the news. I was like, "Okay, come on it's late, we have to catch our plane tomorrow. We need to get some rest."

Bertrand was sitting on the couch, just stuck to the television. He couldn't get his eyes off it. I told him, "Okay," maybe an hour after we got home I told him, "You know, you should come to bed and get some rest." He was like, "There's no way. There's too much happening. It's too horrible. I have to see it come to an end." That's when he decided that we wouldn't go to Berlin the next day. I guess he watched the news until maybe 2:30 and you go to bed.

Andy: After seeing the French special police it wasn't more than two minutes before we made it to Andrew's friend's house. Essentially we stayed up for two, three hours, watching the news.

Kevin: I told Nico that I was going to stay and sleep at his place because I didn't live far from Charonne and it would have been a little risky to go there. We went to bed, it was like three or four in the morning. We go to bed, I was just wiped, I was tired. I'd been up for almost a whole day. I was wiped, really wiped.

Julia: Honestly, when I went to bed I was only thinking that if we were not going to Berlin it would be a horrible weekend because I really needed to get away from it all. "It all," being my life. I guess what I first thought was, "Damn, why did it have to happen now?" I know it's very selfish but there's some times in your life when you just ... sometimes it's just you that matters. It's only been a few days after that I understood Bertrand's decision. We probably got up around 9:00, turned the news back on and kept seeing the same footage, but Bertrand really felt like he wanted to walk around the neighborhood and pay his respects, so we did.

I felt so uncomfortable when we got in front of that restaurant, La Belle Équipe, it translates to The Good Team, I guess. Right across the corner really, and on the left is a sushi place, on the right there was a very old bakery, and opposite on the other side of the street there was a beauty salon. The first thing I noticed, there was a hole in the beauty salon window from a gunshot. There was a cat inside of it, inside the beauty salon. I remember people walking by and some people were taking a picture of that kitten, thinking, "That's so cute." You're like, "Are you serious? I don't think you understand what just happened here."

I was mad and I really felt out of place because I could see all those people crying, obviously they had lost someone. I felt like I shouldn't have been there because it was not my turn yet, I could come later to pay my respect but now was not the time for me. Yeah, I think that was not our turn to be there. Let the people who actually need to pay their respect be there and then we'll come back some other day. I convinced Bertrand that we should go back home. It was probably nothing, we were home doing nothing, TV, watch the news over and over. That was it.

Andy: There's only been one other time that I've been scared for my life. Paris was the second. I can't even remember the first, so clearly I must have not been that scared, but I will for sure remember Paris forever. The thing that always plays in my mind is during the stampede, if I was with Abby and Aaron, that would have been absolutely terrifying because we would have been holding him and trying to run. I think about that over and over and over.

If it's just me alone, running, I feel fairly equipped. If something's going to happen it's going to happen to me, but to know that if I'm with my wife and my son ... Yeah, that was a hard thing to process after, and probably something that will stay with me. It makes me think about other places in the world where people have to run or where you have to be fearful for your life.