An Australian father has shared his story of escaping the massacre in Paris with his young son, Oscar, who is only 12.
John Leader, who lives in Paris with his family, told CNN’s Senior International Correspondent Clarissa Ward that he was at the rock music concert at the Bataclan with Oscar.
“We heard this bang, bang, bang, and like everyone else we thought it was fireworks, or part of the show,” Leader told CNN.
“And then I felt something go past my ear, I don’t know what it was.
“Everybody threw themselves on the ground. It was still dark so only the concert was lit up on the stage. As I stuck my head up from the desk to see what was going on I saw the two shooters. One was changing his magazine, so he had a whole lot of magazines in front of him and he had a big vest on.”
“I could see one of the guys was covering and doing crowd control, and the other guy was executing,” Leader recalled. “So there was no chance of anyone being a hero because these guys were organized, one was covering the crowd and the other was doing the shootings.”
“Oscar was trying to get under the mixing desk, but when he got under there, he saw the mixing engineer waving at him to go back because the attackers had a full view of the other side of the desk. He tried to get up, but I told him: ‘Stay down, these guys are killers.’”
During a lull in the shooting, Mr Leader grabbed his son and ran for the exit, through a “lake of blood and bodies”.
Mr Leader pushed Oscar towards the door, following a few seconds behind him. When he got outside, however, the terrified dad couldn’t see his son anywhere and in video footage, he can be heard screaming ‘Oscar’ over and over again.
Father and son were reunited, and both are well.
