Muslim workers saves while radical Islamist kills.
Photo: Le Parisien
Muslim worker at Paris kosher store saves 6 people from attack
Lassana Bathily from Mali worked at the kosher supermarket and led six people to safety during the attack by hiding them in the supermarket's freezer.
While a radical Islamist was carrying out a shooting spree and taking hostages
at a kosher supermarket in a Paris suburb on Friday, another Muslim, Lassana Bathily from Mali, who worked at the store, was saving the lives of shoppers and helping them hide in a supermarket freezer.
Bathily saved the lives of six people whom he took to the supermarket's freezer – sparing them from the scarring scene that was underway. Four people were killed in the attack on the kosher supermarket before police were finally able to raid the store and kill the attacker – Amedy Coulibaly.
Muslim supermarket worker Lassana Bathily saved six shoppers lives. (Photo: Le Parisien)
Among the six lives that Bathily saved was a one-month-old baby.
"When they ran downstairs I opened the door to the freezer and I went inside with them," said Bathily. "I turned off the light and I turned off the freezer. I left the freezer and told them to stay calm."
Hostages being led out of the kosher supermarket.
Some of the hostages aided police by calling them from their mobile phones. After the attack ended, and police killed Coulibaly, the shoppers thanked Bathily for saving their lives.
A council member who spoke to the hostages who hid in the freezer said that they joked that they considered opening a bottle of wine. "There is a lot here," said the council member.
A day after the attack on the supermarket ended, stories emerged of how various shoppers and workers at the supermarket worked during the attack to aid police officers and help save one-another's lives.
Coulibaly (right) and Boumeddiene.
One supermarket worker, who the attacker did not see, escaped to an elevator with the keys of the store and was able to flee the building. The keys eventually helped police storm the store.
Coulibaly was killed by police on Friday, and it was also unveiled that he was the killer behind a deadly attack on a French female police officer on Thursday.
Brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who were the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, were also killed on Friday after holding one individual hostage at a printing house in Danmartin-en-Goele near Charles de Gaulle Airport.
France remains on high-alert after the attacks as police forces continue on with the search for Coulibaly's partner, and wife by common law, Hayat Boumeddiene. French police forces have warned the public to consider her as armed and dangerous.
On Sunday, a "silent march" is planned to take place in Paris to honor the victims of the attacks and rally against extremism.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that the vast number of people killed during the terror attack in the past three days in France point to a "clear failure" of the security apparatus and intelligence system. He added that France would conduct a "war against terror."
