It was Bastille Day on the French Riviera.
lawyer was strolling together with her mom, pals and a colleague alongside the beachfront boulevard in Good to rejoice France’s nationwide day.
4 younger sisters from Poland had spent a day sightseeing. Two Russian college students had been on a summer time break. And a Texas household, on vacation with younger youngsters, was taking in a few of Europe’s traditional sights.
The intense lights of the packed boardwalk glittered alongside the bay like a string of stars.
These lights would mark a pathway of homicide and destruction that night time of July 14, 2016.
Shortly after the tip of a fireworks show, a truck careered by way of the crowds for 2km like a snow plough, hitting individual after individual.
The ultimate dying toll was 86, together with 15 youngsters and adolescents, whereas 450 others had been injured.
Eight folks go on trial at the moment in a particular French terrorism court docket accused of serving to the attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who left a ugly path of crushed and mangled our bodies. Bouhlel himself was killed by police the identical night time.
“It was like on a battlefield,” stated Jean Claude Hubler, a survivor and an eyewitness to the horrific assault that vacation Thursday.
He rushed to the boardwalk to assist after listening to determined screams of individuals, who had been cheering and laughing and dancing on the seaside a minute earlier than.
“There have been folks mendacity on the bottom in every single place, a few of them had been nonetheless alive, screaming,” Mr Hubler stated.
As he waited for the ambulances to reach, he kneeled down beside a person and a girl as they lay dying on the pavement, in a pool of blood and surrounded by crushed and mangled our bodies. “I used to be holding her hand on her final breath,” Mr Hubler stated.
Three suspects have been charged with terrorist conspiracy for alleged hyperlinks to the attacker.
5 others face different felony costs, together with for allegedly offering arms to the assailant. If convicted, they face sentences starting from 5 years to life in jail. The decision is anticipated in December.
Investigators didn ’t discover proof that any of the suspects was straight concerned within the murderous rampage. .
Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian with French residency, was the lone attacker, and is taken into account solely liable for the deaths of 86 folks, together with 33 foreigners from Poland, the US, Russia, Algeria, Tunisia, Switzerland and elsewhere.
Myriam Bellazouz, the lawyer, lived just a few streets from Good’s boardwalk. She was strolling alongside it together with her mom on the night time of the assault and was killed.
It took pals and colleagues three days of frantic looking across the traumatised metropolis and pleas on social media to search out her stays.
Solely two of the 4 Chrzanowska sisters, on vacation from Poland, returned house alive.
When the 19-tonne truck sped by way of the group, one of many college students from Moscow, Viktoria Savachenko, couldn’t get out of the way in which in time and was killed.
American Sean Copeland, from a city close to Austin, Texas, additionally died within the assault alongside together with his 11-year-old son, Brodie.
Christophe Lyon is the only survivor of an prolonged French household that had gathered in Good for the Bastille Day celebrations.
His mother and father, Gisele and Germain Lyon, his spouse, Veronique, her mother and father Francois and Christiane Locatelli and their grandson Mickael Pellegrini, all died within the assault. Lyon is listed amongst dozens of witnesses, survivors and victims’ members of the family who will later this month testify within the Paris court docket to the horrific occasions of that night time.
Islamic State claimed accountability for the carnage. Nevertheless, French prosecutors stated that whereas Bouhlel had been impressed by the extremist group’s propaganda, investigators discovered no proof IS orchestrated the assault.
Eight months earlier than the Good assault, on November 13, 2015, a workforce of battle-hardened IS extremists, unfold round Paris to mount coordinated assaults. They killed 130 folks and injured a whole lot with their assaults on the Bataclan live performance corridor, cafes and the nationwide stadium,
After 9 months of trial, the lone survivor of the murderous group that had terrorised the French capital, Salah Abdeslam, was in June convicted of homicide and sentenced to life in jail with out parole for the deadliest peace-time assault in France’s historical past.
The trial of the eight suspects within the Good assault will happen in the identical Paris courtroom because the proceedings in opposition to Abdeslam.
