Oklahoma Man Living In Paris Recounts Terrorist Attack

Three days after the attacks in France, Parisians are doing their best to return to normal life.  The entire country observed a moment of silence on Monday.

An Oklahoma man who's living in Paris says he's counting his blessings. He was inside the soccer stadium when two bombs went off.

Colby Corsaut is from Southern Oklahoma. He lived in Durant before he and his wife moved to Paris a year and a half ago for missionary work. Corsaut was enjoying his first soccer game with friends from his mission work when a loud echoing boom went through the stadium.

“I was with a buddy who is Australian and I was like, ‘A bomb just went off,’” explained Corsaut via SKYPE from Paris Monday. “He said it was a cannon. I was like, ‘Listen, OU has cannons. They play football and it’s like when the score or times when it makes sense.’ And there are no cannons on the field.”

And that's when it happened again.

“Like rumbled the ground underneath your feet and you just heard a wave of fear go through the stadium,” he explained.

11/16/2015 Related Story: French Sweep Up Suspects, Bomb ISIS In Syria

Still the match continued, but Colby told his friends they needed to leave. When they walked outside they saw the chaos below.

“One of the scariest times was 10,000 - 20,000 people in absolute fear for their lives running away at once,” said Corsaut.  

With the battery dying on his phone, Colby quickly posted on Facebook what was happening and that he was OK. Police armed with machine guns and grenade launchers shepherded them to the train station.

“The first stop and they get on saying in French, everybody needs to get off the train and run as quickly as possible away from the station.”

Unaware of what else was going on across the city, Colby and his friends then started walking home.

“We didn’t know that we were essentially walking through the other attacks,” said Corsaut.

Colby and his group finally made it home safely around 3 a.m. He says his experience is only increasing the urgency of his mission. 

“It doesn’t change my calling and what God led us here to do,” said Corsaut.

According to French police, one of the attackers wearing an explosive vest had a ticket and tried to get into the stadium, but was discovered when he was frisked entering the game.