A tourist who was eating dinner near the one of the shooting locations in Paris today has described the chaos of the situation as the attack was unfolding.
Witness Margot Schmorak said that she and three colleagues were eating dinner when they “heard a bunch of gunshots, maybe eight to 10 and then there was kind of a pause and there was a few more.”
“We saw people running from around the corner and actually from the other direction as well and our first instinct was to run into the restaurant,” Schmorak said.
The French capital is on edge after multiple coordinated attacks unfolded throughout the city, including two shootings.
Schmorak said that over the course of the incident, three to four police officers came into the restaurant giving various instructions, one with a gun and wearing a bulletproof vest.
“We had the blinds closed to the restaurant and some people had left the restaurant,” she said. “They told us one area to go that was safe but we’re tourists so we’re feeling a little bit nervous [about] where exactly to go and how to get back.”
A student from New York University who is studying abroad in Paris was walking in one of the neighborhoods near some of the six attacks when they occurred this evening.
Bianca Valle, 20, told ABC News that she and a friend were walking when they heard a string of shots so they ran to take shelter in a restaurant where the owner was pulling down a metal security gate.
“They huddled us back into their kitchen and closed all the doors and waited in silence until someone got news on their telephone,” Valle said.
“We were so lucky that they let us in,” she said.
Valle couldn’t be sure how many gunshots she heard but said that they “were so loud, and so close, and so many.”
The shootings were just part of what police believe is a coordinated attack. There were multiple explosions at the city’s football stadium where the French and German national teams were facing off, and there was a hostage situation at a concert hall with at least 100 people inside, authorities said.
There have been at least 120 fatalities confirmed so far by the Paris prosecutor.(MEGHAN KENEALLY and KELLEY ROBINSON)
Link: http://abcnews.go.com/International/american-tourist-paris-describes-hearing-shooting-attack/story?id=35190375
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