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19 April 2024

Stories of those who died in the Paris attacks

Published
By AP

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:

On a night off from running their family's well-known restaurant, Pierro Innocenti and Stéphane Albertini went to the Bataclan to enjoy the rock music they both loved. Innocenti's last Facebook post was a photo of the marquee advertising the Eagles of Death Metal show, with a caption Innocenti added: "Rock!"

The cousin-colleagues would be shot while standing at the bar as the attackers entered, Innocenti's father, Alfio, told The New York Times.

The cousins and Pierro (also called Pierre) Innocenti's brother, Charles, ran Livio, the family's five-decade-old eatery, known for attracting a star-studded clientele to its spot in a Paris suburb. Innocenti's relations also included French comedian and actor Smaïn, who said on his Facebook page he was "alive in body but bruised in my heart" on hearing of his death.

Pierro Innocenti, 40, told Le Parisien last year that he, his brother and Albertini had spent so much time at Livio as children that they were "almost born here."

While the Innocenti brothers went to hospitality schools and joined the family business early, Albertini joined it later, in 2003. A married father of a young son, he became known for giving a warm "good evening" to every patron, France's Le Figaro newspaper said.

Outside work, Innocenti was a skydiver, a skier and a surfer who traveled the world seeking challenging waves, surfing pal Laurent Hubert told The Associated Press.

"He was really crazy about big waves and strong surf," said Hubert, who got to know Innocenti as part of a group of surfers who frequent Biarritz, on France's Basque coast. "He was in love with everything extreme."

When he heard about Innocenti's death, Hubert called around to friend after friend, unable quite to believe the news.

"This guy was super-alive," he said, "and such a nice person."

- Marion Lieffrig-Petard, 30, loved to study music, explore other cultures and spend time with her 24-year-old sister Anna. They died together at a Paris restaurant during the terrorist attacks.


Marion was a student at Paris-Sorbonne University studying for a master's degree in music. But her wanderlust had taken her to studies in Barcelona, Spain. She hoped to do the second year of her degree in Palermo, Italy, according to a Paris-Sorbonne news release. On this particular weekend, though, she was reveling in time spent with her sister, Anna.

- Anna Lieffrig-Petard was a graphic designer who favored whimsical, cartoon-like characters.


Anna had worked for Reporters Without Borders, which described her in a news release as a dedicated artist during an internship there in 2013.

Mayor Yves Crosnier-Courtin of Chaille, France, in the family's home region where the women's parents run a butcher shop, said they had sent a message to their parents before the attacks "telling them that life was good and they were happy to be together," according to Le Figaro newspaper website.

- Among the audience at the Bataclan, Anne and Pierre-Yves Guyomard were particularly steeped in music. He was a well-known sound engineer who taught his craft at a technical institute, and she was a former student.

Anne Cornet and Pierre-Yves Guyomard

"He was a kind human, super-competent, extremely funny and fun-loving," singer Leslie Winer told The Associated Press by email. "Peerless" in both the studio and live settings, Pierre-Yves Guyomard, 43, worked with artists including Winer and the French rock band Tanger, said guitarist Christophe Van Huffel, a former Tanger member and a collaborator of Winer's.

- Anne Cornet Guyomard, 29, had been one of her husband's students before changing careers to pediatric nursing, Van Huffel said in a bio provided to AP. She worked at a child care center near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the Paris suburb where they lived and were married in May 2013 by Mayor Emmanuel Lamy, according to the French newspaper Le Parisien. He recalled a couple "full of life and hope."

The two had lived for a time on the Indian Ocean island of Réunion, where Anne Guyomard's relatives 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.

The last time Winer spoke to Pierre-Yves Guyomard, she said, "he told me they were hoping to have children sometime soon."

- Elodie Breuil, 23, had gone with several friends to see the concert at the Bataclan the night of the attacks. Her brother, Alexis Breuil, told Time magazine that his family called Elodie's cell phone all night, contacted her friends and searched for his sister at area hospitals, only to learn she was one of the victims.


The family eulogized the young woman's death on a special Facebook page created in her memory by her cousin Chloé Fontaine, who remembered Elodie's gentleness, her artistic soul, her jokes and the kisses she bestowed on family members.

"Elodie saw only happiness ... she was an exceptional person. If you have to remember one word about her, it's the joy of living," Fontaine told The Associated Press.

Ecole de Condé Paris, an art and design school in Paris, also announced Elodie Breuil's death on its Facebook page. The school said Breuil was a 2nd year student in Product Design.

Alexis Breuil told Time that Elodie and their mother had marched in the rally following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January, to peacefully show their support. He said he hoped the response to the current attacks would also be peaceful: "I want to show the other cheek," Alexis Breuil said. "Instead of responding with violent acts, we have to understand what is the cause of the problem and work together to try and prevent it."

- Quentin Boulenger, who led marketing projects at the French cosmetics company L'Oreal Paris, was killed at the Bataclan theater.

Boulenger, 29, was raised in the French city of Reims and had lived in Paris for the past few years working at L'Oreal. The cosmetics company confirmed his death to The Associated Press.

Boulenger graduated from the Audencia Nantes School of Management in 2010. The school eulogized Boulenger via Twitter.

- Suzon Garrigues, 21, loved rock music and the socially conscious works of 19th-century French novelist Emile Zola. But she will never hear another band or finish her bachelor's degree in literature at Paris-Sorbonne University.

Garrigues died in the attack at the Bataclan theater, where she was attending a rock concert. She went to the concert with her brother, who was pushed to safety by the stampeding crowd, according to Le Parisien newspaper's website.

In a news release, Paris-Sorbonne President Barthelemy Jobert remembered Garrigues as generous, funny, and a deep admirer of Zola's works. Her father is a dermatologist in the Paris suburb of Maisons-Lafitte, where Deputy Mayor Jacques Myard said Garrigues' "cowardly murder at Bataclan was the work of the dregs of humanity," Le Parisien reported.

- Marie Lausch and Mathias Dymarski loved music and going to concerts and had gone with another couple Friday night to see Eagles of Death Metal play at the Bataclan music venue.


"Both of them had tremendous energy and an enthusiasm for life," said a statement from a group of their close friends provided by friend Pierre Charton.

The pair, both 23, had been together for five years, the statement says. Lausch was in her final year of business school and was doing an internship in the cosmetics industry in Paris. Dymarski, a civil engineer, had just gotten a job in the Paris region.

Lausch was passionate about fashion and dance, while Dymarski was a high-level BMX bike rider. They also enjoyed traveling and going out with their friends, their friends said.

- 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.

- Raphael Hilz, a 28-year-old architect originally from the southern German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, was one of two German victims of the attacks, killed at a restaurant near his office.

Hilz had been working for six months in Paris in the international firm of architect Renzo Piano, his uncle told the Suedtirol News.

The firm told The Associated Press that they were "very sad to confirm that one of our colleagues of German nationality" died in the Friday attacks.

They said two other colleagues, from Mexico and Ireland, were injured but were now doing well.

- Nicolas Classeau, the popular director of the University of Marne-la-Vallee outside Paris, was mourned on the school's Facebook page.

"Full of wisdom and kindness," the page said in announcing his death the day after the attacks. "Invested in his work, dedicated to help students beginning with personalized assistance," the page said, adding how Classeau was always able to help students to solve complicated academic problems and situations.

"Words fail to describe the sadness we currently experiencing ... A thought for all the dead of this barbarism and their families," the site said. The university also offered psychological assistance to anyone in need.

Classeau was 43 years old and the father of three children under the age of 16, according to Le Parisien newspaper.

He was a lover of rock music and played guitar in a band during high school, the newspaper said. He was attending the Bataclan when he was killed. His companion was wounded and is hospitalized in Paris.

- 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."

- 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."

- Kheir-Eddine 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 programme and was involved in the university's traditional music ensemble.

The school says Sahbi died while returning home in the 10th arrondissement, where a restaurant was attacked.

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."

- 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 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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."

-  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."

Associated Press writers who also contributed to this report: Cara Anna in New York; Pamela Sampson in Atlanta; Jeff Donn in Plymouth, Mass.; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Colleen Barry in Milan; Maria Verza in Mexico City; Kate Brumback in Atlanta; David Rising in Berlin; and Steven R. Hurst in Washington.