A University of Ottawa student found herself caught in the middle of the manhunt for the terrorists
Allie Daniel is in France, just east of Paris, very close to the police raids in search for those responsible for mass murder. 20-year-old Daniel arrived in France a week ago today; not quite the experience she was expecting but, as she says, she had just experienced a terrorist attack in her own city of Ottawa.
Over the last two days, heavily armed police officers have spread out across parts of France, frantic in their search for those responsible for the deadly attacks that began Wednesday at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. An hour north-east of Paris, they descended on the city of Reims and raided an apartment building just around the corner from Allie Daniel's dorm. There was information that one of the suspects was thought to have lived in the area.
‘We saw around the corner from us people with machine guns and a threat of a rocket launcher,’ Allie Daniel explained in a phone conversation with CTV Ottawa.
Daniels is a 3rd year business student at uOttawa on a six month exchange with the Reims Business School. She had just arrived last Friday. She said classes continued as usual on Wednesday but the organizers of the exchange program told the students later that day not to go out because it was dangerous.
‘I’ve never lived on my own,’ says Daniel, ‘and being in a dorm room all by myself, I wasn't eager to go to sleep when everyone went home. It was terrifying and so I called home just in case something happened.’
Terrifying, too, for Valerie Yobé, a native of France who is living in the Outaouais, teaching graphic design with the Université du Québec en Outaouais.
‘I feel like I should be in my country right now but at least I am thinking about them.’
Thinking of the victims of Charlie Hebdo with a display of those killed and the work they did. Monday, when students return to class, Yobé says this will be a teaching moment.
‘Our students who are thinking of going in to be cartoonists, they are thinking about it for sure and we will push them to continue to do it and believe in what they want to do.
At Fridays call to prayer at a mosque in south Ottawa, Muslims focus on the victims of the tragedy.
‘This kind of killing is not fair, it's not acceptable, says Dr. Ghazi Abu Hammad, “We pray for them as brothers in humanity.’
And they denounce the acts of the terrorists.
‘Islam is a peaceful religion,’ says another man, ‘if you kill one person, you kill the whole world. It's very wrong.’
Allie Daniel says, for the moment, she is not considering cutting her exchange short. After all, she says, there was a terrorist attack in Ottawa. She adds she doesn't know where it's safe anymore.
