‘Sebastian’ speaks to newspaper about pulling woman inside as another survivor tells how she and her boyfriend pretended to be dead as gunmen walked past

The man who helped a young woman who was pictured hanging from a window ledge at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris as terrorists massacred those inside has reportedly spoken about what happened.

Identified only as “Sebastian”, he told a French newspaper how he had pulled the woman inside as gunmen moved around inside the theatre.

The woman, who has not been identified but is believed to have survived, was captured on mobile phone footage, in which she can be heard shouting: “Help, help, I’m pregnant, catch me if I fall.”

According to La Provence newspaper, Sebastian saw her as he ran from the gunfire inside.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Le Monde journalist Daniel Psenny posted a video of people climbing out of windows of the Bataclan concert hall, including the woman. Photograph: Daniel Psenny

He added: “She was begging people down below if they would catch her if she jumped. But it was chaos down there. We were 15 metres above the ground.

“I held on for five minutes and then the pregnant woman, who was exhausted, begged me to help her get back inside. That’s what I did.”



“I don’t know where she went afterwards but I went back to my old hiding place, which wasn’t great. Five minutes later I felt the barrel of a Kalashnikov against my leg and a terrorist yelling: ‘Get down from there … Lie on the ground’.”

Complying with the order, he said that he lay down with more than a dozen others as the gunmen fired from the balcony. Sebastian gave other details about the events inside the theatre where 89 people were killed.

The gunmen, he claimed, engaged in “negotiations” with the police at one point after ceasing fire and also told their victims that they had come to make them suffer in the way that people were suffering in Syria.



Another story of survival from the attack in the Bataclan came from an Irish woman, who told how she and her boyfriend lay on the floor and pretended to be dead as they saw a gunman walk by them.



Katie Healy said that her boyfriend, David Nolan, threw himself on top of her and was himself shot at one point after the gunman burst into the theatre.

The couple had been standing near a door when they heard gunfire and saw flashes, she told the Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ.

Irish broadcaster RTÉ speaks to survivors of the attack in the Bataclan concert hall.

“We realised what was happening and the crowd fell to the side. Everybody got up to run and gunshots started again so we lay on the ground among the bodies of everyone who stood with us and just played dead.”



She added: “We are not sure at what point David was shot. He threw himself on top of me twice. Both times when we fell he covered me, making sure that he covered my head and my chest was covered as best as he could.

“It became quiet and you could hear everybody moaning. Single shots started to fire – we realised that the gunmen were walking around killing everybody who lived.

“We saw the feet of a gunman who walked past us and we said our goodbyes and as we realised what was about to happen to us, someone opened a door somewhere and we just ran.

The couple managed to reach the street and sought refuge in an apartment complex, where a young woman let them in and tended to Nolan’s wounds.