We knew about the explosion – the police were clearly jumpy. It was very tense

We knew about the explosion – the police were clearly jumpy. It was very tense

18 November 2015

JAMES Kerr was slightly irritated by security staff at the entrance to the Stade de France in Paris on Friday.

After deciding to get last minute tickets for the friendly football match between France and Germany, the Downpatrick man and his friends were frustrated by delays at the main gate as doormen searched every one of the 80,000 spectators.

The queues were so lengthy, they missed kick-off.

But just minutes later, one of those security workers foiled a suicide bomber after spotting a deadly device attached to his waist as he was being frisked.

The man blew himself up as he backed away from the queue.

Two other suicide bombers also attempted to strike the stadium while gunmen killed over 100 people at various social venues across the French city.

James, who was in Paris for a photographic trade fair, said the irony of his frustration with security staff, who potentially saved hundreds of lives, has since played on his mind.

After spending the next day wandering an eerily quiet Paris, he said the enormity of what had happened in Paris and what might have happened in the stadium began to sink in.

For although he had heard two of the explosions within the first half hour of Friday’s match, James said he and his friends dismissed the noise, described as “loud bangs”, as fireworks brought into the stadium by football fans.

It was only as the game continued, and French Prime Minister Francois Hollande was whisked from his VIP spectators box to safety, that word began to spread through texts and calls that something very serious was happening across the city.

James said he believes discussions must have been underway at that time about how best to evacuate the stadium without causing panic.

At the end of the match, an announcement was made that some exits and one of the car parks were closed and James said his group watched much of the evacuation from a balcony before eventually exited the stadium’s turn-style.

He said they were then unsure of what to do, and said police were obviously on high alert, shining floodlights on fans who took the wrong road and ordering them to their coats.

“At that stage we knew there had been an explosion in the neighbourhood, but I did not know for another 24 hours that it was right at the gate or that suicide bombers were involved,” he said.

“The police were clearly jumpy. We hung back a bit and thought we had better do what we were told.

“It was tense. The difficulty was that by this time it was after 11pm and it was becoming increasingly clear that this was really very serious.”

James said he was relieved to get a metro to his apartment where she sought refuge until the following morning. The following two days, he said, were “very strange.”

“There was a degree of not knowing what to do on Saturday morning,” he said.

“The place was abnormally quiet. I went to a cafe across the street because I wanted some breakfast. There were so few people about.”

James, who is a photo dealer, was due to take part in a trade show over the weekend but he said that was cancelled following an edict from the French government that all cultural events, galleries and mass gatherings be cancelled.

It was after a long walk through the deserted tourist areas that he decided to catch an early flight to London where he was due to work the following week.

“I was a little bit wobbly. You think of what might have been,” he said.

“We were held up at the stadium because security men were doing a badly paid job for little thanks and they kept us safe.

“One of the men in the queue had a device that was spotted and he backed away. The intention was to get inside the stadium where a lot of people would have been killed and there would have been panic among 80,000 people. There were kids there.

“Nobody likes to stand in a security line but it was there for a reason.”