Resident in Nice on her family’s narrow escape from attack

Resident in Nice on her family’s narrow escape from attack

Parents of victims embrace each other near the scene of the truck attack in Nice, France.-AP

(Vatican Radio)  Vanessa Greco, an American resident in the French city of Nice, had a narrow escape when she and her family decided not to attend the city’s fireworks display marking France’s National Holiday because one of her young children fell sick at the last moment. Greco, a former journalist at Vatican Radio now living in Nice with her two children aged 4 and 5, described the somber mood and shock following Thursday’s attack which saw a driver plough his truck at high speed through packed crowds that had gathered along the city’s famous Promenade des Anglais boulevard. She spoke to Susy Hodges about how she first learnt the news and her personal reaction to this tragedy.

Greco described how a friend who had gone to the fireworks display phoned her up to check where she was and how she could hear the sound of people screaming in the background during their conversation. 

She said the news left her feeling “terrified” and wondering, like other parents, how they can protect themselves and their young children. One of the most shocking things for her was that the truck driver responsible for the attack had chosen a soft target: families and children who had flocked to the Promenade des Anglais to watch a fireworks display on a national holiday.

Greco walked around many areas of central Nice on Friday and described the very “somber and sad” mood now reigning in the city.  She said many restaurants in the area near the attack were closed and the normally packed beach by the Promenade des Anglais was empty despite the hot and sunny weather.

Looking visibly traumatized, the nanny who looks after Greco’s children had gone to the fireworks display with her husband and afterwards told her employer how she had seen a young boy killed by the truck and other people mown down by the truck driver. “Describing what she saw and heard….. it was clear she had “lived a nightmare,” said Greco.

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