During the string of bombings in Paris this Friday that have claimed the lives of at least 127, one Frenchman’s life was spared, thanks to his cellphone.
A young man identified as Sylvestre spoke to Reuters after a bomb went off outside the Stade de France, where 80,000 sports fans were inside watching a soccer game between a French and a German team. Sylvestre had finished up a call on his cellphone and was unknowingly walking toward a suicide bomber who stood a few feet away.
“The time [my friend] took to hang up, I was crossing the street and straight away — boom!” he told a reporter.
“It exploded right in front of me,” Sylvestre continued. “Everything was blown to bits, and I felt stuff flying around, and I left. I fell, and then I got back up … so this is the cellphone that took the hit. It’s what saved me, otherwise my head would have been blown to bits.”
The debris from the blast struck the man’s phone with such force that it cracked his screen and bent the frame. Although his phone saved him from any injuries to his head, pieces of the bomb hit him in the abdomen and foot. He showed a Reuters cameraman the blood that seeped through his shirt from the wound.
At least 4 have been reported dead after the Stade de France bombings. Two bombs went off at the stadium’s entrance, and one exploded near a McDonald’s restaurant. Several people nearby were injured.
