Juneau resident Henry DeCherney was sitting in a Paris café near the famous Bastille monument around the time the Charlie Hebdo office was attacked Wednesday. But the 25-year-old didn’t know about it until he got a message from America.
“I got a text from my aunt and then a text from my father that was like, ‘Are you safe? Are you OK?’ And I had literally no idea what was going on,” DeCherney says.
After going online to see the news, he returned to his hostel where fellow travelers were talking about it.
DeCherney went back to the Bastille the next day where a large vigil was held the night of the attack.
“There’s candles and people put pens and flowers down and wrote and spray painted, ‘Je suis Charlie’ everywhere.”
He had arrived in Paris on Monday as part of an extended holiday traveling in Europe. Wednesday’s attack on the satirical magazine left 12 dead. In a dual hostage situation Friday, four were killed. The two main suspects in Wednesday’s attack and an associate were killed as well. DeCherney is trying not to let the events ruin his first time in Paris.
DeCherney says most Parisians seem to be going about their normal lives keeping tabs on the events online.
“In the places that I’ve been where there have been TV, it doesn’t really seem like there’s been a lot of coverage of it. Most of the places are still playing like sports, like cricket, soccer, whatnot,” he says.
During Friday’s hostage situations, DeCherney was shopping and walking around the city. When he stopped at a café and got on Wi-Fi, he saw what was happening and made his way back to the hostel. He didn’t really know what was going on or where.
DeCherney says moving around the city hasn’t been hard. For the most part, public transportation was uninterrupted and businesses stayed open. But he says security is everywhere and the sound of sirens constant.
“There’s police and then there’s a lot of guys in uniform with automatic rifles just walking around on the streets,” DeCherney says.
He hasn’t necessarily been scared or felt like he should stop sightseeing. He was alarmed at first after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and his heart rate definitely went up when he found out there were gunmen on the loose.
“But on the other hand, I was like I’m not going to let this affect my daily life. It’s not going to make me more afraid and I think that is the general attitude of most Parisians here,” DeCherney says.
And he’s not allowing the attacks to ruin his first impressions of Paris.
“This is, you know, I hate to say it but, the world we live in now. This is just another thing that happens in big cities and international cities and it’s an increasing problem and I don’t want it to make my impression of Paris any bad or worse because it has really nothing to do with Paris, I don’t think. It’s an international problem,” DeCherney says.
Prior to the attacks, DeCherney planned on only being in Paris a week. His next stop is Marseilles.
