'We were taking people off the street'

A Paris-based Tullamore native who was working a short distance from the Batacalan Theatre where terrorists killed almost 90 people last Friday night, says that it will take a long time for life to return to normality in his adopted city.

Terry O’Connor was working in McBride’s Irish Bar in the centre of Paris on Friday night when it first emerged there had been a number of terrorist attacks in the city that he has called home for the past three years.

“We were watching the Irish game and word started to filter through that there had been an explosion in the Stade de France. Within half an hour we were told to close the doors and turn off the lights. It was pretty scary.”

McBride’s is located a short distance from both the Batacalan Theatre, where 89 concert goers were killed, and Rue Bichat, where a further 15 people were indiscriminately shot by Islamist terrorists. 

While they were still unaware of the seriousness of the situation a short distance away, Terry says that within minutes the busy streets around the bar became deserted as worried locals and tourists sought refuge.

“We were taking people off the street. We had a 'porte ouverte’ (open door) policy. We were 15 minutes from where all that happened (in the Batacalan Concert Hall) and were just concerned about getting people in off the streets”.

After more than two hours, Terry and his French girlfriend 'Pesh’, who was visiting the bar, attempted to leave as they were eager to return to their home in the north of the city. However, the couple were forced to return to the bar.

“We chanced leaving around midnight. We heard the metro was surprisingly still running. We had just left the bar when two police men with machine guns screamed at us to get back. They were arresting someone. It turned out that the person they were arresting was mentally ill.'

“We had to stay in the bar for another hour and when we got the last subway home it was deathly quiet. There was only a couple of people on it,” he recalls.

Terry was rostered to open the popular Irish bar, which is located on Rue Saint-Denis in the 1st arrondissement, on Saturday. While many bars and restaurants in the locality remained closed, he says he decided to open up as an act of defiance against the perpetrators of Friday night’s atrocities.

“It was almost too early too return to work. As you would expect after an attack on a bar, nobody was in, which is what you would expect. The defiance amongst the Parisian people will come this weekend, I think,” the Tullamore native maintains.

“My girlfriend’s a teacher and when she went back to work on Monday she found out that a 25-year-old colleague had been killed in the concert hall. She didn’t want me to go out or go anywhere. People are worried about their loved ones and I’m worried about mine, but we have to get back to daily life, what else can we do.”

While he believes that people of Paris will recover, he feels they will have to live with the threat of terrorism for some time to come.

“After Charlie Hebdo, it went out of people’s minds but I don’t think it’s going to happen after this. It seems Paris is a huge target. While people are going to have to be more observant and aware, people don’t fee safe and it can happen in an instant. You just know not the end of it end,” Terry O’Connor concludes.