PARIS — Salim Toorabally’s mental scars from the Paris terror attacks 10 years ago have not healed with time and the images of that night at Stade de France remain indelible.
The November 2015 attacks began at France’s national stadium and spread across the city in assaults that killed 132 people and injured more than 400. One person died and least 14 were injured outside Stade de France that night, but casualties there could have been far heavier without Toorabally’s vigilance.
It was Toorabally who stopped Bilal Hadfi — one of the three terrorist bombers who targeted the national stadium when France’s soccer team played Germany — from getting inside.
Toorabally was praised for his actions, by then-President François Hollande, by the Interior Ministry and also by the general public. Yet his own suffering, unrelenting since that night, went unnoticed.
“I was seen more as a hero than as a victim,” Toorabally told the Associated Press in a recent interview. “But this part of being a victim is equally inside me.”
Later on Thursday, France played Ukraine in a World Cup qualifier at the Parc des Princes stadium in Paris, where a commemoration was planned and Toorabally was invited by the French Football Federation.
“I will be there but with a heavy heart,” he said. “Ten years have passed like it was yesterday we were attacked.”
Stopping the bomber
Toorabally was positioned at Gate L as a stadium security agent.
Hadfi tried to enter but was stopped by Toorabally when he spotted him trying to tailgate another fan through the turnstile.
“A young man showed up. He was sticking close behind someone, moving forward without showing his ticket. So I said to him, ‘Sir, where are you going? Show me your ticket.’ But he just kept going, he wasn’t listening to me,” Toorabally told the AP. “So I put my arm out, put my arm in front of him so he couldn’t go inside, and then he said to me, ‘I have to get in, I have to get in.’ It made me suspicious.”
Toorabally kept an eye on the 20-year-old Hadfi, who was now standing back a few yards away.
“He positioned himself right in front of me, he was watching me work and I alerted [fellow security agents] over the radio: ‘Be careful at every gate, there’s a young man dressed in black with a young face, very childlike, who is trying to get in. Do not let him in,’” Toorabally recalled. ”He stood in front of me for about 10 minutes, watching me work, and that’s when I got really scared. I was worried he’d go back in, that I wouldn’t see him. I watched him intently, he stared at me intently and suddenly he disappeared in the crowd, he slipped away.”
Toorabally’s warning worked. Hadfi was denied entry elsewhere, before later detonating his explosive vest.
The explosions
There were two explosions close together during the first half of the match; the first ones around 9:20 p.m. near Gate D, and a third explosion approaching 10 p.m. close to a fast food outlet.
Toorabally vividly remembers them.
“I could feel the floor shaking,” he said. “There was a burning smell rising into the air, different to the smell of [smoke] flares.”
He also tended to a wounded man that night.
“I took charge of him, I lay the individual down. He had like these bolts [pieces of metal] lodged in his thigh,” said Toorabally, who still speaks to the man today. “I looked at my hands, there was blood. I didn’t have gloves on, and there were pieces of flesh in my hands.”
Keeping fans in the dark
Toorabally said he and other security agents were told not to inform spectators of the attack, to prevent a potential situation where 80,000 people tried leaving at the same time.
“The supporters inside couldn’t know the Stade de France had been attacked otherwise it would have caused enormous panic,” Toorabally explained. “At halftime some fans came up to us and asked, ‘What happened? Was there a gas explosion at the restaurants in front of the stadium?’ We didn’t answer them so as not to cause panic.”
After the game the stadium announcer told spectators which exit gates to use and many went home by train, including Toorabally.
Traumatic images
Five days after the attack he was called to a police station to help identify Hadfi as one of the bombers. Toorabally was given no forewarning of what he was about to see.
“They showed me a photo, his [Hadfi’s] head was separated from his body. The forensic police [officer] was holding his head,” Toorabally said. “I formally recognized him. It was indeed the man who had been in front of me, who had stood there, who had been alive and was now lifeless.”
Hadfi’s face remains imprinted on Toorabally’s mind.
“The image is very violent, someone’s head separated from his body. Then there’s the explosion, the odor of burning and my hand filled with human flesh. These images have stayed in my mind for 10 years.”
Toorabally‘s wage that night was 40 euros ($46). “I suffer from post-traumatic stress, it is very severe, very violent.”
Horrific memories can appear at any moment.
“I could be with you and talking with you and then all of sudden my mind goes back there,” Toorabally said. “This is something very, very difficult to deal with. It handicaps you.”
Talking helps
Toorabally talks to a psychiatrist and says it helps to tell people about what happened. But at the time of the attacks and in the months afterward he received no psychological support.
“That’s how traumatism sets in,” Toorabally said. “The proof being it stayed 10 years.”
He dealt with his mental anguish alone, having potentially saved hundreds of lives.
“Every time I go back to the Stade de France, I can’t help thinking about it,” Hollande told L’Équipe newspaper. “I realize what could have happened if an attack had taken place inside the stadium, or if panic had gripped the crowd.”
Former France midfielder Blaise Matuidi called Toorabally “more than a hero” and added “if the terrorists had entered, what would have happened? Just talking about it gives me chills.”
Pugmire writes for the Associated Press.
