French President Francois Hollande said the attacks in Paris targeted “youth in all its diversity,” killing at least 129. Here are some of their stories:
— Ciprian Calciu, 32, and Lacramioara Pop, 29, were among the millions of Romanians who have migrated West in recent years in search of better-paid jobs. The dream of a better life took them separately to Paris, where they met, became a couple and had a son, Kevin, now 18 months old.
They died at the Belle Equipe restaurant where they were celebrating a friend’s birthday, said Calciu’s cousin, Ancuta Iuliana Calciu.
“They weren’t even sure what restaurant to go to. There was another one about 250 meters (yards) away they wanted to go to,” she added.
Calciu repaired elevators and Pop, who had an 11-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, worked in a bar.
“I’m so glad they didn’t take their son that night,” Calciu’s cousin said Tuesday.
Flowers and candles appeared at the gate of Pop’s family home in the small village of Coas in far northwestern Romania, while in Tulcea, an eastern port at the end of the 2,860-kilometer (1,780-mile) River Danube, there was a memorial service on Monday at the church where Kevin had been baptized.
— Fanny Minot went straight from her job at a TV newsmagazine show to the Bataclan on Friday night. By Sunday, the show’s host, Ali Baddou, would be mourning her death on-air.
Minot, 29, was an editor at the show, “Le Supplement.” Artistic and free-spirited, she enjoyed making independent movies — and above all, enjoyed new experiences, her friend Stephen Fox told The Associated Press. He got to know Minot purely by chance, when she and a friend of hers were traveling in the U.S. about four years ago and came to stay with him and his then-roommate, courtesy of a free-stay website for self-declared couch-surfers.
Despite their different backgrounds, the guys from Shelbyville, Kentucky, and their visitors from France became such fast friends that the travelers stayed two extra days, and then the hosts drove six hours to Memphis, Tennessee, to spend another day with them. And a few months later, Fox went to France to visit Minot over New Year’s Eve.
“She was such a loving, compassionate person, with such an adventurous view on life,” said Fox, 27, who credits her energetic outlook with inspiring him to get his post-college life in gear by going to nursing school. “She was a very motivated, hardworking person, and she just loved life.”
Over the years, they stayed in touch, speaking by Skype every few months. But perhaps the memory that most sears his mind is of their goodbye at the airport in Paris.
“We just stood there in silence, realizing it was going to be a long time before we saw each other again, and we said, ‘We’re not saying goodbye — we’re saying: Until the next time,'” he recalled. “Which now kind of hurts, because that’s taken away.”
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— Mohamed Amine Ibnolmobarak, 29, was an architect of Moroccan descent who studied and worked in Paris. He was killed at the Le Carillon restaurant in Paris while dining there with his new wife, according to a Facebook posting by his cousin Akram Benmbarek of San Diego. The wife, Maya Nemeta, was shot three times and was in critical condition at the hospital, the cousin wrote.
Ibnolmobarak was born in Rabat, Morocco, and had come to France to complete his university studies. Jean Attali, his professor at Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris Malaquais, where Ibnolmobarak also taught, wrote on Facebook that his young colleague was a “Muslim intellectual” whose thesis diploma focused on the pilgrimage to Mecca.
“Amine had found his place in our school and in the exercise of his profession of architect,” Attali wrote. “Many of us… hoped for a great future for him.”
The young architect had co-founded a cultural association focused on cities called New South. This month, the group’s work — including that of Mr. Ibnolmobarak — was exhibited at the Galerie du CROUS in Paris. On its Facebook page, New South wrote a tribute to Ibnolmobarak: “His research process, based on intelligence, tolerance and love could not have been a better legacy against terror.”
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— Kheireddine Sahbi, 29, was an Algerian violinist who had come to Paris to perfect his art at the Paris-Sorbonne university. According to an announcement by the school, Sahbi was enrolled in the Masters of Ethnomusicology program and was involved in the university’s traditional music ensemble.
The school says Sahbi died while returning home in the 10th arrondissement, where terrorists attacked a restaurant.
The young violinist was born on the outskirts of Algiers, the capital of Algeria, and was widely known as Didine. Mr. Sahbi’s friend from Algeria Fayçal Oulebsir posted on his Facebook page: “Didine, my friend… You left us too young, dying in Paris so far away from us, taking with you your joy of living and so many hopes.”
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— On their wedding day in 2013, Anne and Pierre-Yves Guyomard struck the mayor of their Paris suburb, Emmanuel Lamy, as a couple “full of life and hope,” Lamy recalled to the French newspaper Le Parisien .
Two and a half years later, their community, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, would be holding a moment of silence this week for them and others killed in Friday’s attacks in Paris.
Among the crowd at the Bataclan, the Guyomards were particularly steeped in music. Pierre-Yves, 32, taught film scoring at a technical institute, and Anne, 29, had studied music before going to work at a child-care center, according to Le Parisien.
The two had lived for a time on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion, where Anne Guyomard’s family told news outlet L’Info they had spent an agonizing day and a half wondering about the couple’s fate, calling unanswered phones and appealing for word of the two via Facebook, before being told they had been killed.
Anne was “the daughter I would wish on all parents — one who’s attentive, one who’s full of life,” and she loved children and people in general, brother-in-law Chris Hamer told L’Info. Pierre, meanwhile, was “an encyclopedia of music.”
“Their shared pleasure was music,” Hamer wrote on his Facebook page.
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— Sebastien Proisy, 38, had launched a promising career in international business consulting that would never be fully realized. He died at a restaurant along Bichat street in Paris during the terrorist attacks when he was shot in the back, according to the Liberation newspaper website.
He was at a business dinner and accompanied someone at the table who wanted to take a smoke outside, according to his great uncle Daniel Senecaut, who was quoted by the La Voix du Nord news website.
Proisy had studied political science and later went to Florida with his Bulgarian wife and son. On their return, they settled in Noisy-Le-Grand on the outskirts of Paris, as the family told it. Proisy also served in staff positions at the European parliament in Bruxelles.
In the past year, he had gone into business in consulting for the Airbus Group. He had also worked as an executive for a company promoting French agribusiness abroad and another business doing market research in Iran and Central Asia, according to his LinkedIn profile. “He was very brilliant,” La Voix du Nord quoted his grand aunt Jeanne Broutin as saying. She and Senecaut described their grandnephew as kind and charming, but also a workaholic.
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— Helene Muyal, 35, of Paris, was a makeup artist and mother who died at the Bataclan concert.
Her husband, Antoine Leiris, posted a memorial on Facebook, telling the terrorists: “I won’t give you the gift of my hatred. It’s what you sought, but answering hate with anger would be to surrender to the same ignorance that has made you what you are.”
He said the life of his 17-month-old child with his late wife, carried out in happiness and freedom, would forever be a challenge to the terrorists. “And you won’t have his hatred either,” Leiris concluded.
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— Lola Salines of Paris, a young editor at Editions First-Gründ, died at the Bataclan concert hall. Her father Georges Salines and brother Clément Salines took to social media after the attacks to launch a desperate search for Lola, who did not respond to their calls. The family later posted on Twitter and Facebook that authorities had confirmed Salines, 28, was one of the victims.
The young woman also was a member of a Parisian roller derby league called ‘La Boucherie de Paris.’ Her team name was Josie Ozzbourne, #109, according to the group’s Facebook page.
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— Francois-Xavier Prevost, 29, was head of advertising at the French advertising agency LocalMedia and also worked recently for another communications company, Havas Media Group. He died at the attack on the Bataclan theater, according to Yannick Bolloré, the Havas Group CEO who mourned the young worker and several others via Twitter.
Prevost had also spent some time in the United States. The University of North Texas said Prévost had been an exchange student at UNT in the fall of 2007. And the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, a pro soccer team in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said Prevost interned with the team in the summer of 2009.
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— Marie Mosser’s love of music brought her to the Bataclan concert hall where she died. The 24-year-old from the French city of Nancy worked for the label Universal Music, according to the “20 minutes” news website.
Mosser’s Twitter profile said she worked in communication and digital marketing. Pascal Negre, president of Universal Music France, tweeted over her death and that of two other victims: “The Universal Music family is in mourning.” Mosser’s father is a manager in Nancy city government, “20 minutes” reported.
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— Bertrand Navarret, 37, lived in the southern French community of Capbreton near the Spanish border and was just spending a few days in Paris with friends. They decided to take in a rock concert — where Navarret was killed at Bataclan hall. Starting on a family career path in law, Navarret had given it up for a new life in Canada, where he learned to work with wood. He eventually returned to France with new skills and remade himself as a carpenter and avid snowboarder, according to the Liberation news website.
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— Guillaume Decherf, 43, had written about the latest album by Eagles of Death Metal late last month for French culture magazine Les Inrocks and was at the band’s concert Friday night.
Vincent Boucaumont said he had known Decherf for about 25 years, since the two were in high school, when they would go down into the basement of Boucaumont’s grandfather’s house to play their guitars together. Both music lovers, they had a radio show focusing on hard rock and heavy metal music for two years after high school, he said.
“He was very sociable, very open to others, very curious, a pacifist and very kind,” Boucaumont said, speaking in French by telephone. “He was someone who tried to understand things and who also shared with others.”
A fellow music journalist, Thomas Mafrouche, often saw Decherf at concerts and was supposed to meet him Sunday. In a Facebook message to The Associated Press, Mafrouche said Decherf was extremely proud of his two young daughters. “I’m thinking about their pain, about their father, whom they will miss terribly,” he wrote.
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— Germain Ferey, 36, of Paris, was a photographer and film artist who loved rock music, according to his sister, Domitille Ferey. He was at the Bataclan concert hall Friday when gunfire rang out.
His sister said he shouted for his partner to run — but when she turned and looked behind her, Germain Ferey was not there. “We think he told her to run because he wanted her to protect herself for the sake of the little one,” his sister told The Associated Press, referring to the couple’s 17-month-old daughter who was with her grandparents. The partner was unhurt.
Ferey’s sister said he started out working in a bank, but the work was not to his liking. He then sought training at ESRA, a French academy that specializes in cinema and photographic arts. That enabled him to pursue a career that he truly wanted, his sister said. His website hosts an array of creative projects, including a photo montage entitled “I (heart) NY: http://www.germain-ferey.com/
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— Gregory Fosse, 28, of Gambais, France, died at the Bataclan concert hall. He worked for the D17 television station. The company put out a statement saying, “We all knew his kindness, his special smile, and his passion for music,” according to the Liberation newspaper.
Gambais Mayor Régis Bizeau said the community was “deeply shaken,” according to the “toutes les nouvelles” news website.
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— Pierro Innocenti, 40, of Paris, was a manager at his family’s Italian restaurant on the outskirts of the city. His last post on his Facebook page was a photo of the Bataclan’s sign advertising the Eagles of Death Metal show, with a caption Innocenti added: “Rock!”
Innocenti (sometimes called Pierre) helped run Livio, a five-decade-old eatery known for attracting a star-studded clientele to its spot in a Paris suburb. French comedian and actor Smaïn, a relation of Innocenti’s by marriage, said on his Facebook page he was “alive in body but bruised in my heart” on hearing of his death.
A friend, Olivier Cagniart, told Vanity Fair Italia that Innocenti had been tired and hadn’t felt like a concert, but rallied and decided to go.
A surfer and skydiver, Innocenti looked at life as a constant challenge to do more, Cagniart told the magazine. “He always had a thousand new projects to carry out, experiences to have. Watching him in action made you want to hug him and tell him, ‘Thanks for all your energy.”
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— Justine Moulin, 23, of Paris, had a passion for travel. She studied at the SKEMA Business School in Paris and planned to attend its satellite campus in Raleigh, N.C., according to The News Observer newspaper in Raleigh.
Moulin was killed while having dinner at Le Petit Cambodge, her favorite restaurant, according to news reports.
“She was always smiling. She wanted to travel the world,” friend Julie de Melo was quoted as saying in the News Observer.
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— Thomas Duperron, 30, of Alencon, France, died at the Bataclan concert hall. He worked as communications director for the Maroquinerie theater in Paris, according to its website and the news site les InRocks.
In Facebook postings, his brother Nicolas called Duperron’s death a “horrible tragedy” and his parents thanked all the friends who tried to find him after the attacks, saying they were “so much there for him.”
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— Matthieu Giroud, 38, of Jarrie, France, was killed at the Bataclan concert hall. He taught geography at Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallee university, where he specialized in urban development. A university news release said the institution was both “crushed and outraged.”
Giroud leaves behind a pregnant wife and three-year-old son, according to the Liberation newspaper.
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— Nick Alexander, 36, of Colchester, England, was working at the Bataclan concert hall selling merchandise for the performing band, Eagles of Death Metal. “Nick was not just our brother, son and uncle, he was everyone’s best friend — generous, funny and fiercely loyal,” his family said in a statement. “Nick died doing the job he loved and we take great comfort in knowing how much he was cherished by his friends around the world.”
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— Thomas Ayad, 32, was a producer manager for Mercury Music Group and a music buff who was killed at the Bataclan. In his hometown, Amiens, he was an avid follower of the local field hockey team. Lucian Grainge — the chairman of Universal Music Group, which owns Mercury Music — said the loss was “an unspeakably appalling tragedy,” in a Saturday note to employees provided to the Los Angeles Times.
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—Elodie Breuil, 23, a design student, had gone to the Bataclan concert hall with about a half-dozen friends, said her brother, Alexis, who confirmed his younger sister’s death to Time magazine. The friends scattered in the shooting. Alexis told the magazine that his sister and mother had marched in Paris after the attack early this year on the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. “They did it to show their support,” he said.
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— Asta Diakite, was the cousin of French midfielder Lassana Diarra, who played against Germany in Friday’s soccer match at Stade de France, during which three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the stadium Friday night. Diarra, who is Muslim, posted a message on Twitter after his cousin was killed in the shootings, saying that “She was like a big sister to me.” He added: “It is important for all of us who represent our country and its diversity to stay united against a horror which has no color, no religion. Stand together for love, respect and peace.”
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— Elif Dogan, 28, a Turkish-born Belgian national, lived in Belgium but made monthly business trips to Paris, said her father, Kemal Dogan. She was staying at an apartment near the concert hall, but he told Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency that she was not at Friday’s concert and he was not sure where his daughter died. He said her death was confirmed by Belgian officials. He said his daughter had been involved in charity work since her school days, distributing food to the poor or teaching French in Nigeria.
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— Fabrice Dubois worked with the publicity agency Publicis Conseil. The agency said in a statement on Facebook that he was killed at the concert hall. “He was a very great man in every sense of the word. Our thoughts are with his family, his wife, his children, his friends, those with whom he worked.”
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— Michelli Gil Jaimez, of Tuxpan in the Mexican state of Veracruz, had studied at a business school in Lyons, France, and was currently living in Paris. She had just gotten engaged to her Italian boyfriend, according to her Facebook page. Mexican officials did not give her age or say where she was killed. She also held Spanish citizenship.
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— Nohemi Gonzalez, 23, a senior at California State University, Long Beach, was attending Strate College of Design in Paris during a semester abroad program. Gonzalez, from El Monte, California, was in the Petit Cambodge restaurant with another Long Beach State student when she was fatally shot, Cal State officials said in a news conference Saturday.
Her mother, Beatriz Gonzalez, said Nohemi graduated from high school early and couldn’t wait to go to college. “She was very independent since she was little,” she said. Design professor Michael LaForte said Gonzalez stood out at the California university. “She was a shining star, and she brought joy, happiness, laughter to everybody she worked with and her students, her classmates.”
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— Hannover-born art critic Fabian Stech was among the victims killed at the Bataclan club. The 51-year-old, who had been living in France since 1994, taught in Dijon at a private art school and worked for the German art magazine Kunstforum International, the magazine said in a condolence notice on its website.
He leaves behind a wife and two children, the magazine said.
“That Fabian had to die such a horrible and unnecessary death makes our pain and grief unbearable,” his family in Germany said in a statement published in the Hannoverische Allgemeine newspaper. “Together with his children and his wife, we miss Fabian. He was a great person.”
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— Alberto Gonzalez Garrido, 29, of Madrid, was at the Bataclan concert. The Spanish state broadcaster TVE said Gonzalez Garrido was an engineer, living in France with his wife, also an engineer. They both were at the concert, but became separated amid the mayhem.
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— Mathieu Hoche was a cameraman for France24 news channel, which said he was 37. He was killed at the concert. A friend, Antoine Rousseau, tweeted about how passionately Hoche loved rock ‘n’ roll. Gerome Vassilacos, who worked with Hoche, told the AP that his colleague was fun, easygoing and great to work with. “Even though he laughed easily and joked around, he worked hard.”
Hoche had a 9-year-old son whom he had custody of every other weekend, so he lived a bit of a bachelor lifestyle, Vassilacos said. He and Hoche would go out for beers and chat up women, and Vassilacos said he recently thought they should hang out more often because they had so much in common.
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— Djamila Houd, 41, of Paris, was originally from the town of Dreux, southwest of the capital. The newspaper serving Dreux — L’Echo Republicain — said Houd was killed at a cafe on the rue de Charrone in Paris. According to Facebook posts from grieving friends, she had worked for Isabel Marant, a prestigious Paris-based ready-to-wear house.
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— Cédric Mauduit was director of modernization of the French department of Calvados. The department issued a statement announcing his death at the concert hall, saying that Mauduit “found it a joy to share this concert with his five friends” and said the sadness of those who knew him was “immense.” Anyone who worked with Mauduit, the statement said, could appreciate both his skills and his humanity.
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— Aurélie de Peretti had posted on Facebook that she was going to the Bataclan on Friday night, said her older sister, Delphine, who with her father, Jean-Marie, confirmed her death to Time magazine after a call from Paris police. Delphine said she posted a joking response “saying ‘enjoy your great evening listening to that crap music.'” While Delphine lives in London, Aurélie had stayed closer to their hometown of Saint Tropez in the south of France and worked at a beach resort in the summer. “I left 13 years ago, and yet somehow we got closer and closer over the years,” her sister said.
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— Valentin Ribet, 26, a lawyer with the Paris office of the international law firm Hogan Lovell, was killed in the Bataclan. Ribet received a master of laws degree from the London School of Economics in 2014, and earlier did postgraduate work at the Sorbonne university in Paris. His law firm said he worked on the litigation team, specializing in white collar crime. “He was a talented lawyer, extremely well liked, and a wonderful personality in the office,” the firm said.
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— Patricia San Martin Nunez, 61, a Chilean exile, and her daughter, Elsa Veronique Delplace San Martin, 35, were attending the concert at the Bataclan with Elsa’s 5-year-old son, who Chilean officials say survived. San Martin Nunez had been exiled from Chile during the dictatorship of Gen Augusto Pinochet, and her daughter was born in France.
In a statement, Chile’s Foreign Ministry described them as the niece and grandniece of Chile’s ambassador to Mexico, Ricardo Nunez. “They were taken hostage, and so far we know they were killed in a cold and brutal manner,” Nunez told Radio Cooperativa on Saturday. He said two people with them escaped alive.
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— Valeria Solesin, 28, an Italian-born doctoral student at the Sorbonne, had lived in Paris for several years. She had gone to the concert at the Bataclan with her boyfriend. They lost track of each other as they tried to escape. Her mother, Luciana Milani, told reporters in Venice, “We will miss her very much, and she will be missed, I can also say, by our country. People like this are important.”
Solesin had been working at the Sorbonne as a researcher while completing her doctorate. While at a university in Italy, Solesin had worked as a volunteer for the Italian humanitarian aid group Emergency. “It is tragic that a person so young, who is trying to understand the world and to be a help, find herself involved in such a terrible event,” said Emergency regional coordinator in Trento, Fabrizio Tosini.
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— Luis Felipe Zschoche Valle, 33, was a Chilean-born resident of Paris. Chile’s Foreign Ministry said he had lived in Paris for eight years with his French wife and was killed at the Bataclan, where he had gone with his wife. He was a musician and member of the rock group Captain Americano.
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@Keith – I enjoyed your article; as usual. I’m sure it was a good time for all involved!
I do not agree with your last paragraph however. So far the main thing that the U.S. has done is to continue to try to force their prohibitionist will on the rest of the world. We have, unfortunately, led the way to mass incarceration and violence because of all the lies and unbelievably harsh laws our lawmakers have perpetrated. We are not the first country to ease up on the moronic war against ganga users either.
Slowly but surely it does seem like politicians are waking up to the fact that Americans want ganga to be legal here and have started taking their baby steps.
I sincerely hope that sometime soon I will be able to once again believe what I once believed as a child; and that is that we live in “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”!
Long time them on the Right track also them moving at a snail pace