Survivors recalled how the assailants fired focused, methodical bursts from their AK-47s.
Laurent Léger, previously an investigative reporter for Charlie Hebdo, described a “kaleidoscope of pictures, sounds, reminiscences, sensations” that overwhelmed him.
“In a flash, I noticed the our bodies fall,” Mr. Léger mentioned. “Listening to the others, plunging again into this nightmare, this carnage, it’s very attempting.”
The testimonies of Ms. Rey and Ms. Vinson have been notably harrowing.
Ms. Rey’s voice trembled when she recalled being grabbed by the brothers as she headed outdoors to smoke a cigarette. She remembered how ready they have been — they knew her face and her nickname, Coco — and their pleasure as she typed within the entrance code.
“After the capturing, there was silence,” mentioned Ms. Rey. “A deathly silence.”
For Ms. Vinson, who has a tattoo on her arm that includes the names of the 12 folks killed, phrases tumbled out in lengthy, vivid spurts, interrupted solely when she stopped to metal herself.
She defined how she hid behind a low wall within the newsroom, heard pictures and felt the affect of a physique — Mustapha Ourrad, a proofreader — falling in opposition to it on the opposite facet, and the way Chérif Kouachi leaned towards her, telling her they didn’t kill girls. (The truth is, one of many folks that they had simply shot lifeless was Elsa Cayat, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who wrote a column for Charlie Hebdo.)
Peering at the gunman’s eyes by his black masks, she remembered how tender his gaze appeared.
