Stories of those who died in the Paris attacks

They were artists and students, music lovers, parents and newlyweds. The victims of last week’s attacks in Paris had varied backgrounds and interests. Among the 130 killed in the attacks, here are some of their stories:

___

—Richard Rammant, 53, deeply loved rock music, motorcycles and his wife. He died at her side as he tried to protect her during the attack at the Bataclan concert hall.

The president of the Cahors Blues Festival, where Rammant was a volunteer for many years, told The Associated Press that Rammant died while shielding his wife, Marie Do, who survived.

“They lay down on the floor and he lay on top of her,” Robert Mauriès said. “At one point, Richard moved and the terrorist saw him and shot him. She survived, because she played dead.”

Mauriès said Rammant’s wife, who was shot in the legs, recounted lying under her husband’s body. The ordeal took three hours. Mauriès said she underwent a successful surgery this week and remains at the hospital.

Mauriès said Rammant took a week of vacation every year to volunteer at the festival, where he was in charge of sound and lighting.

“He was an extraordinary human being, gentle, helpful, always in a good mood. He was a good man,” Mauriès said.

The couple lived in Cergy-Pontoise, a Paris suburb. Rammant looked the part of a Harley Davidson enthusiast with his thick beard, bald head and earring. Mauriès said Rammant was a member of Showtime Riders, a Harley Davidson club.

“Our brother Richard… He protected his wife, and he paid with his life. We have a knee on the ground,” the Showtime Riders posted on its website.

Rammant leaves behind two children.

___

—It was supposed to be a night of champagne and celebration.

Thierry Hardouin booked one of the best tables at La Belle Equipe. It was his girlfriend’s birthday, and he wanted everything to be perfect.

Instead, the lovers were gunned down in the adjacent Rue de Charonne when the terror cell struck the Paris restaurant.

Hardouin, 41, was a 15-year veteran police officer in Bobigny, just outside the French capital. His fellow cops bitterly bemoaned his death.

“We knew each other since the police academy,” Officer Jean-Luc Dubo told the newspaper Le Parisien. “He was a colleague and a very good friend. We’ll always treasure the picture of someone who loved life – a joyful man, helpful, and so professional. He brought good humor to the police force.”

Arnaud Leduc, a ranking police official in Bobigny, said Hardouin was highly respected.

His nickname was “Titi,” and friends said he loved guitars, cigars and traveling. They were raising money to help defray the cost of his funeral and to underwrite part of the costs of educating his three children.

“Money won’t bring back our friend, Thierry, who we’ll miss forever. But it’s a way to lend a hand to his family,” organizer Romain Jumelet told French television.

___

—Franck Pitiot was a bit of a Renaissance man. He worked as an engineer who oversaw construction projects. He was an enthusiast of roller blading and juggling, motorbiking and running.

And he enjoyed music, listening to the Eagles of Death Metal when terrorists attacked the Bataclan concert hall.

He died at age 33, an employee of MCCF, a branch of the VINCI construction group. He had earned his civil engineering degree at Ecole Centrale Paris, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He finished university studies in 2006 at ESSTIN in Nancy in northeastern France. The school remembered him on Twitter, saying : “L’ESSTIN-Nancy is in mourning.”

The last item on a list of interests on his LinkedIn profile: humanitarianism.

___

—Antoine Mary grew up in the town of Caen in northwestern France, but was drawn to Paris, where the 34-year-old had worked for the past two years as an IT developer for Milky, an advertising agency in the French capital.

Mary had just resigned to pursue a freelance career and had launched a website to drum up business. He was in the crowd at the Bataclan theater, celebrating with a close friend, Germain Ferey, 36.

They died there together.

His former employer tweeted: “Today we mourn one of our own. Your free spirit, your lovely sense of humor – Antoine, we’ll never forget you. RIP.”

On social media, Mary shared his passion for music, especially rock and techno. Many in his hometown said they were grief-stricken. “So much sorrow for this magnificent young man,” said Anne-Marie Lechat, of Caen.

___

—Hyacinthe Koma had second thoughts about going to a friend’s birthday party at the La Belle Equipe bar. There was a woman he wanted to get together with elsewhere, but friends persuaded him to join the festivities.

“He went. And a few hours later, he was dead,” a friend, Greg Lima, told Britain’s The Daily Mail newspaper.

Originally from Burkina Faso, Koma had grown up in the Paris suburbs. He was living in the city and working as a waiter at Les Chics Types, a restaurant under the same ownership as La Belle Equipe. Just two days before his death, he had updated his Facebook profile photo to a picture of himself in a dinner jacket and bow tie, holding a culinary torch.

Koma was an avid follower of soccer’s Paris-St. Germain team, known as PSG, and particularly of star player Zlatan Ibrahimovic, according to fan site CulturePSG, which encouraged enthusiasts to contribute to a fund for his funeral.

“Hyacinthe was like all of us: a lover of life and of PSG,” it said.

___

—Isabelle Merlin, 44, was fiercely devoted to her family – so they knew something was terribly wrong when she didn’t respond to their texts and voice mails.

An engineer and project leader for Continental Automotive in Rambouillet, about an hour and a half’s drive southwest of Paris, Merlin was single. Friends and relatives recalled her as full of life and fun.

“Hyper dynamic,” one called her.

Music was her passion – she took a singing course in Paris – and it was what drew her to the Bataclan theater. Merlin had just bought an apartment in Paris’ desirable Montparnasse neighborhood, and her family had gathered three weeks ago on Nov. 1, the All Saints Day holiday, to celebrate with her.

Merlin’s music teacher, Morgan Dress, organized a rock concert in her memory at a pub in central Paris a week after the Nov. 13 attacks.

“She had such a sunny personality,” he told the newspaper Le Parisien.

___

—David Perchirin began his professional life in journalism, but he made a career switch to pursue his true calling: education.

Perchirin, 41, taught at two schools in Seine-Saint-Denis, a half-hour’s drive east of Paris. He was killed helping out with the concert at the Bataclan.

Rock music was one of his greatest passions, said his companion, Claire Peltier. So were a good whisky and cycling, she told the newspaper Ouest-France.

“He went everywhere on two wheels – even to work,” Peltier said.

A friend, Samuel Hennequin, teased Perchirin for being a bit of a dandy: “David loved to be well-dressed. He had a passion for polos and Japanese jeans.”

Perchirin, a father of two, would have celebrated his 42nd birthday on Dec. 8.

___

—Vincent Detoc, an architect who lived in suburban Paris with his wife and two young children, died at the Bataclan concert hall. It wasn’t until the next day that the terrible news reached his family.

Monika, his wife, described the ordeal to Le Parisien newspaper of the family being summoned by authorities to a meeting.

“From that moment, I knew,” she said. “I understood that we were not asked to come to get good news.”

Monika waited as authorities brought relatives into a room one by one.

“Every two minutes, we heard people screaming,” she said. “When it was our turn, we were brought around a large table. A magistrate told us, ‘We inform you that Mr. Vincent Detoc succumbed to the terrorist attack.’ Nothing else.”

Vincent Jeanbrun, the mayor of Detoc’s hometown of L’Hay-les-Roses, expressed his condolences on his Facebook page, remembering Vincent Detoc, who was “unjustly felled under the bullets of barbarism.”

___

—Cecile Misse felt right at home – “good in her skin,” as the French expression goes – at a place like the Bataclan.

The 32-year-old was in charge of production at the Jean-Vilar Theater in Suresnes, a town on the outskirts of Paris on the other side of the Seine. Friends and colleagues said she was mesmerized by music and the performing arts since she was 6 years old, and working in that world was a dream come true.

She died there with her musician companion, Luis Felipe Zschoche Valle.

“For us, she’ll always be a magnificent example of devotion, engagement, enthusiasm and professionalism,” her theater said in a tribute posted on its website, http://www.theatre-suresnes.fr/hommage-a-cecile-misse.

“The accounts of those who worked with her are eloquent: always smiling and available, always positive and generous – truly a bright personality,” it said.

___

—Precilia Correia, 35, of Paris, was remembered by her younger sister, Tatiana, as someone with many creative passions: music, languages, cooking, crafts and snowboarding.

“She loved rock and frequently went to concerts,” her sister said in an email to The Associated Press. “She was always smiling, had many friends, and loved to go out.”

She was out on the night gunmen stormed the Bataclan concert hall, killing 89 people.

“She loved to travel, discover new cultures and learn languages,” Tatiana said. Evidence of that are the many photos posted by Precilia on her Facebook page of beaches, open seas, bridges and sunsets in Europe and abroad. Her favorite quote was “Truth hurts, but silence kills.”

In addition to French and Portuguese, Precilia also spoke Spanish and English.

Precilia was born in suburban Paris and was a dual French-Portuguese citizen. She adored Portugal and visited her many friends in Lisbon often.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Precilia was an employee of French retailer FNAC.

___

—Christopher Neuet-Shalter, among the victims at the Bataclan, left behind an 11-year-old daughter who was the light of his life.

“The moment anyone uttered his daughter’s first name, his blue eyes lit up,” his grieving companion, Catherine, told the newspaper Le Parisien.

They were, she said, inseparable.

“He was an angel who fell to me from heaven 14 years ago,” she said. “He was sweet, kind, bright – always there for his parents and those close to him.”

Neuet-Shalter, 39, worked as a digital marketing consultant for the Paris-based company M2i. He had gone to the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan with an unidentified friend whose own fate was unclear.

___

—Quentin Mourier, 29, was an architecture student from northeastern France and involved in trying to improve access to fresh, locally grown food.

According to L’Alsace newspaper, Mourier was active in an organization called Vergers Urbains (Urban Orchards), which promotes cultivation of food in heavily populated areas. On its Facebook page, Vergers Urbains remembered Mourier as “full of energy, initiatives, engagement … he contributed enormously to the association, to the collective, to our projects. We will miss him.”

He was attending a rock concert at the Bataclan with some friends. He was the only one among his group who didn’t escape, according to L’Alsace.

Mournier was a doctoral student at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Architecture of Versailles, where a minute of silence was observed by faculty and students in his memory earlier this week.

On its website, the school described Mourier as discreet, persistent and “a free spirit.”

“The research laboratory of the National School of Architecture of Versailles lost one of his young and promising researchers, doctoral candidates a friend.”

“We share his family’s grief,” the school said.

___

—To his friends, and by all accounts he had many, Jean-Jacques Kirchheim was the life of the party.

“A good pal,” one of his buddies told the newspaper Le Parisien.

Kirchheim, 44, had gone to the Bataclan with two close friends and his female companion, who reportedly survived the attack.

Kirchheim grew up in Saint-Maur, southeast of Paris, and was working for the telecommunications company Free at the time of his death.

Friends said he enjoyed rock music, parties and travel to the U.S. – especially California.

___

—Christophe Mutez worked for PROS France, a software company remembering him for his “boundless energy, expertise and professionalism.”

“His infectious laughter, smile and love of life have forever enriched our lives,” the company said in an online tribute. “Christophe’s passing is heartbreaking, and he will be deeply missed.”

Mutez, 40, was killed at the Bataclan theater. He grew up in the small Loire Valley village of Trainou, whose inhabitants “are all in a state of shock,” the L’Echo Republicain newspaper said.

“Christophe was a kind and generous man who will be greatly missed by all who knew him,” a friend, Sandra Curry, posted on an online condolences site.

___

—Armelle Pumir Anticevic and her husband Joseph had reason to celebrate.

He had just landed an important contract at work. So the Paris couple decided to have a little fun at the rock concert at Bataclan hall, where she died the attack. He survived.

She was the 46-year-old mother of two children and also worked in a design firm. Her husband was quoted by the website of Liberation newspaper as recounting the events of that night with horror, anguish and regret.

He said he and his wife at first thought they were hearing fireworks as part of the show but then realized something was wrong. At first, they dropped to the ground but his wife finally yelled: “Let’s run for it!”

They were near the door, but she fell, perhaps tripping over a body. He picked her up in his arms, but as they reached the door, a police officer pulled on his arm, and he lost hold of his wife.

“In front of the door,” he was quoted as saying, “there was a body on the right, another on the left. Farther away, police officers shouted at me to back up. I shouldn’t have listened to them. I could have gone back in to look for Armelle. Maybe. I don’t know.”

His wife is being remembered widely for her smile and vivacity. She began working for the firm Logic Design in the Paris suburb of Boulogne nine years ago. The firm remembered their production manager as strong and full of life.

The statement on their website ended defiantly, saying, “We will keep living, working, and we won’t give in to adversity.”

The family had long kept a vacation home in the mountains of southern France. A friend from there was quoted on the news website of L’Independent as saying: “Armelle was quite down-to-earth and loved life.”

___

—Nicolas Degenhardt, 37, was a yoga teacher at a Paris gym and a pacifist.

He was killed while dining with a friend at the Bonne Bière, a café at the rue de la Fontaine au Roi, according to Le journal Le Maine-Libre. Degenhardt’s family had launched a search for him via social media and called area hospitals, in vain; his body was one of the last to be identified.

Originally from Le Mans, a city in northwestern France, Degenhardt had lived in Paris for about 15 years. He leaves behind a 6 year old daughter.

“Let’s all take care of ourselves for the memory of Nicolas, a father, a brother, a son, a cousin, a friend, a companion, a colleague,” Clarisse Lithardt, a family member, wrote on Facebook.

Stephane Faulon, a friend who studied with Nicolas, said Degenhardt was a pacifist who wore his heart on his sleeve.

“You were a courageous and humble man… full of dignity, simple, sincere, modest, generous, true, and funny,” wrote Faulon, “someone one could count on no matter what.”

Faulon said he and Degenhardt’s other friends and family would “keep on living normally; because we owe it to those who left us, we owe it to our friend Nicolas.”

___

—Baptiste Chevreau, 24, of Tonnerre, a village southeast of Paris, was honored by hundreds in his hometown after he was among those killed at the Bataclan.

Tonnerre Mayor Dominique Aguilar expressed his sympathies to his parents, his sister Clemence and his entire family on her Facebook page, decrying “the barbarism, the madness of men who killed Chevreau in the attacks at the Bataclan.”

According to information Aguilar posted on her Facebook page, some 300 people, including school children, came to Tonnerre city hall on Monday to observe a moment of silence in memory of the victims of the attacks and to sing “La Marseillaise,” the famed French national anthem, in Chevreau’s memory.

Chevreau was related to French singer Anne Sylvestre, who on her website asked that the family be left in peace. While the family appreciates the expressions of sympathy, it wishes to cope with the tragedy in silence.

“Please do not comment on social networks,” Sylvestre wrote.

___

—Mayeul Gaubert was a business lawyer particularly interested in intellectual property issues. He’d written his master’s dissertation on the subject and contributed to a legal blog post about copyright matters after graduating and going to work for Cegos, a professional training and continuing education company.

Wounded at the Bataclan, the 30-year-old Gaubert was brought to a hospital but succumbed to his injuries, his sister, Anais, told Le Journal de Saone-et-Loire, a newspaper in central France. He had grown up in the region but was living in Paris.

Gaubert earned his legal degree in 2009 from the Université de Bourgogne, in Burgundy, according to Jurivision, a law students’ group that paid homage to him on its website.

“He was, above all, a young man full of spirit, with a joyous, non-conforming nature,” the group wrote.

___

—Gilles Leclerc’s whereabouts remained a mystery for days after the attack at the Bataclan concert hall. His partner, Marianne, escaped, but he seemed to have disappeared.

In the frenzied aftermath of last week’s attacks, families and friends frantically searched for the missing, hoping they were not among those killed.

Nelly Leclerc, Gilles’ mother, went on Europe1 radio to plea for information about her 32-year-old son’s whereabouts. Gilles, known as Gillou, lived in Paris.

“We have no news,” she said. The family sent photographs of Gilles – showing his distinctive tattoos – to hospitals across Paris, to police and to investigators, to no avail.

His sister set up a page called “My brother Gilles Leclerc” on Facebook over the weekend in hopes of finding him.

She wrote: “We still haven’t found Gilles this morning but the search is continuing.”

Monday, Nov. 16, at 4:12 p.m., his death was announced.

“We are sad to announce that Gillou has been found dead, unfortunately. Thank you for your support, your expressions and your help in the search.”

___

—Eric Thome, 39, was an artist, fan of music and father with a 5-year-old girl and another child on the way when he died during the attack at Bataclan concert hall.

Thome and a partner were running their own Paris design studio after working in the advertising business for years.

The studio specialized in bold, fanciful, often daring illustrations and photographs. Among the art displayed on its website was a whimsical illustration of a Kalashnikov assault rifle that looks like a plastic toy covered in cartoon-like drawings. Its stock says in bold letters: “It’s not my war.”

“He was an artist, always hip, a party guy who loved music,” a friend was quoted as saying by Le Parisien. “He was full of joie de vivre and adored his kid.”

Thome’s second child was due in weeks, Le Parisien newspaper reported on its website.

___

—Cedric Gomet, 30, of Paris, was a technician for French television network TV5Monde, which posted a video showing a moment of silence being observed in his memory at the station, with employees holding photos of him in their hands.

Co-worker Eric Krissi said Gomet was roundly adored by everyone at the station. “Everyone loved him. He was always smiling … a true professional, truly appreciated.”

Gomet, who began working at the station about five years ago, was passionate about rock music and played guitar in a local band. He died at the Bataclan.

Krissi said Gomet’s family and girlfriend are in deep shock over his death.

___

—Sven Silva was the kind of guy people remembered, and not just because of his flamboyant bushy afro hairstyle.

The 29-year-old Venezuelan could make a joke out of anything, and never said no to a good time, childhood friend Anders Borges told The Associated Press.

“If there was a party, he was there. He’d even go to my parent’s birthday parties,” Borges said. “He was the one who always cheered us up, who made the jokes, who made sure everything went well. We looked to him in good times and we looked to him in the bad times, too.”

Like many middle-class Venezuelans, Silva decided to leave the economically struggling South American country after graduating from college. He moved with his younger sister to Ireland in 2014 to study English, and then settled in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, where he worked as a computer programmer, Borges said.

Last week, Silva traveled to Paris to meet up with two old friends, fellow Venezuelans now living in Europe, and decided to head to a show at the Bataclan.

His mother, Giovanina Perugini, said in a Facebook post that the family would remember Silva’s smile, jokes, optimism and charisma.

She had visited her son in Spain a week before the attacks, Borges said. The family was planning to celebrate Christmas together. Silva would have been the life of the party, Borges said.

___

—A man of many talents and interests, Olivier Hauducoeur died doing one of the things he loved: listening to a rock concert. He was among the victims of the terrorist attack at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

Hauducoeur, a banker, worked for the BNP Paribas Group. Outside of work, he liked to play guitar, enjoyed badminton, and belonged to an athletic club in Yerres, the Paris suburb where he lived, according to the profile he created in Copains d’avant, a website for connecting with old chums.

His profile said he was married with two children. He also ran cross country, according to the website of L’Express newsmagazine. Travels had taken him around Europe, to North Africa and the United States, according to his Copains d’avant profile.

___

—Motorcycle-riding graphic designer Christophe Foultier loved rock concerts, and the Bataclan held a special place in his heart: It was the site of the first show he and his wife, Caroline Jolivet, saw together.

The couple saw countless more bands over the years, but on the 13th, “for once, I skipped the concert,” she said in a Facebook post she provided to The Associated Press.

Instead, Foultier went with a few friends, who survived the attack. But he did not.

“Chris used to say that you can rest when you’re old. That you can’t go through life dreaming, that you have to make each one of your dreams come true,” Jolivet wrote. “Live every second of your life, before it’s too late.”

Foultier, 39, worked with healthcare communications agency Havas Life, which mourned him on its Facebook page. Married in 2012, he and Jolivet were raising their two small children in suburban Courbevoie.

Foultier also was working on an album of his own with a friend, according to an essay by Francois Sionneau, the editor-in-chief of the newsweekly Le Nouvel Observateur’s website and a colleague of Jolivet’s.

The last time he saw Foultier, the designer was picking up his wife at work on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, with a luminous smile, Sionneau wrote. He admired the bike, and Foultier knew it.

“He’d promised me we’d take a big trip together,” Sionneau wrote. Now, “it’s his smile and his thirst for life that will remain.”

___

— He was Christophe Lellouche to some, Chris Kelevra to others, and “Moke” online – a communications worker, a musician, a soccer fan site provocateur. And he was at the Bataclan when the attackers stormed in.

Lellouche, 33, was a guitarist and backup vocalist in an indie pop band, Olivier, and he had composed music for “Jung Forever,” a 2014 Belgian short film about a therapist and a despondent, cancer-stricken woman.

He and director Jean-Sebastien Lopez had barely met, but Lellouche immediately grasped the film’s nuances, and he and another musician quickly created exactly what Lopez was looking for, the director wrote on his Facebook page in a tribute. Lellouche had an instinct “that captured all of what I was feeling and that transformed all of it into notes and melody,” he wrote.

Lellouche was also an all-in soccer fan – his beloved team, Olympique de Marseille, tweeted that he would “always be among us.” Under Moke and other aliases, he was a piquant commentator on fan sites including the satirical Horsjeu.

Sure of himself but never boastful, Lellouche was “a sharp mind, willingly offbeat and caustic, who knew how to get the most out of life,” Guillaume Duhamel, who was among his circle of friends, told The Associated Press. “He left a mark on a lot of people, and his memory will endure.”

___

—Tributes poured in for Estelle Rouat, 25, who died during the attack at the Bataclan concert hall.

She had recently begun her first regular teaching job and a ceremony was held in her honor at the Gay Lussac middle school where she taught in Colombes, a Paris suburb. Students, parents and teachers were leaving flowers in her memory at the school’s entry, the website of Le Parisien newspaper reported.

Teachers were encouraged to talk to their students about the loss, and counseling was provided. Rouat, a native of Concarneau on France’s Atlantic coast, was hired to teach English. Academic Director Philippe Wuillamier was quoted on the Liberation newspaper’s website as saying: “This young woman was passionate about her new profession.”

A website for parents also announced her death, saying: “It’s with shock and pain that we learn of the brutal loss.”

___

—Pierre-Antoine Henry, 36, who died during the attack at the Bataclan, was a communications-systems engineer from a politically active family. His father, Eric Henry, has worked with a member of France’s National Assembly, Serge Bardy, who said on his blog he was “deeply affected” by the family’s loss.

Pierre-Antoine Henry had earned a degree in 2002 from Paris’ L’Ecole de L’Innovation Technologique, the engineering and technology school said on its website.

He and his wife had two small daughters, according to Le Courrier de l’Ouest, a newspaper in western France. A cousin, Amandine Panhard, told Bloomberg News the two “were young professionals, doing well in life.”

“They killed the nicest guy in the world,” she told the news service.