“After a while they reloaded and a technician told us: ‘Next time they stop, we run.’” He said that when he had got home to the US he felt “broken” and found it hard to talk about “normal things”. “We were thinking that it was going to stop but it just kept coming,” Galindo told the court. He said there were so many people in front of the stage that they could not move and he recalled the fans’ faces looking up at the band and the stage in confusion as the terrorists opened fire. Galindo, 52, said it had been a great show, with everyone dancing, and he had not understood the sound of gunshots at first, thinking it was the sound system. But he said: “Evil did not win … You can’t kill rock’n’roll.” Hughes said that six years on he still got nervous looking into crowds, and he had been anxious about giving evidence, with emotions rising up that he thought he had got over. He led the band members running through Paris streets, handing them €50 and putting them in a taxi to the nearest police station, where they found other fans covered in blood.ĭuring the wait there, they learned that Nick Alexander, who had been working on the band’s merchandise at the gig, had been killed.Ī commemorative plaque and flowers at the entrance of the Bataclan concert hall in memory of the Paris attacks of November 2015 in which 130 people were killed. The band escaped through a side door after Hughes had found his girlfriend in the concert hall.Īrthur Dénouveaux, a rock fan who is now the president of the survivors’ group Life for Paris, was among fans who managed to escape at the same time. He said the band “ran for their lives” while “nearly 90 of my friends were murdered in front of us”. While other band members hesitated and wondered what was going on, Hughes said he “knew death was upon us”. “Being from a desert community in California, I know the sound of gunshots,” he said. He said he recognised the sound of gunfire instantly when three gunmen with suicide vests burst in mid-show and opened fire.
Hughes, 49, said the gig should have been the best of their tour and he had been “really excited” to play in Paris. A total of 130 were killed and more than 400 were injured in synchronised suicide bombings and mass shootings across the French capital, from the national stadium to bars and restaurants and the Bataclan rock gig. They had travelled to Paris to give evidence in France’s biggest-ever criminal trial, over the attacks claimed by Islamic State on 13 November 2015.
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