For one Texas A&M student studying abroad in Paris, an ordinary soccer match outing developed into a perilous brush with terrorism.
Laura Lucart, a communication senior studying abroad with the independent organization International Studies Abroad, was attending the soccer match between France and Germany at the Stade de France stadium whenever the deadly attacks that claimed over 127 lives began.
“About halfway through, we heard these huge two explosions that went off and at first we kind of thought it was part of the game, maybe a firecracker, a cannon, or maybe some teenagers messing around,” Lucart said.
She and the group she was with didn’t know any real information about the attack until they made their way to exit the stadium and became part of a desperate mob of people trying to escape.
“At that point I was scared,” Lucart said. “I really thought I could die. I managed to find my roommate, which was a total blessing, and we stuck together, and we got to the train station and everyone was kind of in a panic and hazed.”
Lucart said she and her roommate took the train to Gare du Nord, where they were forced to exit by officials.
“At that point, instead of getting on the other metro to switch trains they forced us out,” Lucart said. “We started running and we knew there was no other way to get home other than to walk.”
Lucart and her roommate were more than an hour’s walk from home and were forced to walk pass the Bataclan theatre, the site of the bloodiest attack of the night that left nearly 90 dead.
“We got about 300 yards away from the theatre without knowing,” Lucart said. “We kind of saw some commotion in the distance and we made sure to navigate to make sure it wasn’t a dangerous zone and it was. Luckily we dodged that.”
Whenever Lucart and her roommate neared Bastille, where they live, they came upon a police blockade.
“I managed to see behind trucks and behind ambulances, there were about 25 bodies on the street covered with sheets,” Lucart said. “I heard family members crying, people screaming, police yelling at citizens, people asking questions — it was all kind of up in the air and it sunk deep just to live it — to be an eyewitness to this tragedy.”
