Stadium guard recalls 2015 Paris terror attack

Salim Toorabally’s mental scars from the Paris terrorist attacks 10 years ago have not healed with time and the images of that night at Stade de France remain indelible.

- BY JEROME PUGMIRE

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 Francois Hollande, by the Interior Ministry and also by the 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."

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."

Bomber stood out

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.