Members of NCS4's Private Security Committee honored security guard Salim Toorabally for his heroic actions preventing a bomber from entering the Stade de France in Paris last November.
Claire Digiacomi
Many survivors of the Paris attacks say their lives were altered on that horrifying night. Salim Toorabally is no exception, but it took him days to realize that he had experienced Nov. 13, 2015 differently from his colleagues.
Toorabally, a French-Mauritian Muslim security guard, was stationed at the national stadium, Stade de France, when three suicide bombers blew themselves up nearby ― the first in a series of deadly terrorist attacks claimed by ISIS that left at least 130 people dead and hundreds wounded.
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Five days later, on Nov. 18, 2015, he walked into police headquarters in the town of Bobigny, in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, and studied photos of a dead man. Only the young man’s head was visible; the rest of his body had detached when the explosive belt he was wearing went off.
The man in the photos was Bilal Hadfi, a suicide bomber. Toorabally recognized him as the person who had tried to get past him at the stadium on the day of the attacks ― but because of him, Hadfi hadn’t succeeded.
Though he had worked as a guard for 13 years, that night was Toorabally’s first guarding the Stade de France. Approximately 80,000 spectators had gathered in the national sports stadium to watch France play Germany in an international soccer friendly. As a passionate soccer fan, it meant much more to him that just another shift.
“It was a very powerful moment, and I was proud to be there,” he told HuffPost France, nearly a year after the Paris attacks. “It was a long weekend because of Nov. 11 [Armistice Day], and people were happy to be there. There were also German supporters, families and children present.”
