A woman who survived the Paris massacre thanks to the hero of La Belle Equipe café who turned himself into a human shield and took a bullet for her is in hospital so traumatised she keeps repeating her saviour’s name.
Chloe Clement was inside the café celebrating a friend’s 35th birthday when it was struck by a hail of bullets during Friday night’s carnage.
The happy occasion became a nightmare when two gunmen opened fire and her friends and colleagues began falling dead around her.
As a bullet whizzed towards Chloe, frozen in her horror, her friend Ludo Boumbas threw himself in between her and the gunman.
Ludo sacrificed himself, but Chloe survived the deadly assault with a bullet wound to the arm.
She now lies in a hospital bed, remembering her many friends and colleagues who died during the birthday celebrations.
‘She was on morphine and was in shock. She would barely speak,’ said the manager of Café des Anges, 27-year-old Virgile Grunberg, who went to visit Chloe in hospital.
‘She felt guilty because Ludovic died for her. She just kept repeating his name again and again.’
Ludo’s family have hailed his selfless bravery and called him ‘a hero’.
An unnamed friend told MailOnline: ‘Ludo threw himself forward to protect a girl and took the bullet.
‘She was also shot, but she survived and is in hospital.
‘He loved travelling the world and above all he loved people. He was just one of life’s good, good people. He didn’t stand a chance.’
Fedex worker Ludo was also at the birthday party of waitress Houda Saadi when gunmen dressed in bullet proof vests moved in.
The majority of the 19 victims at the café were from the birthday celebrations.
Five members of staff from a cafe called the ‘Café of Angels’, were wiped out in the tragedy together with six of their friends.
Houda, 35, and her sister Halima, 36, were among the 19 killed.
Their brothers Khaled and Bashir tried to save the women as they died on the floor in their arms.
Halima, born in Menzel Bourguiba, Tunisia, was mother of two two young children, aged three and six.
Witnesses described how the ‘trendy’ café was transformed into an emergency room as desperate medics battled to save the wounded and dying in the Paris gun massacre.
Restaurant worker Romain Ranouil, 48, described being faced with a wall of bodies as he arrived at the besieged café, which was hit by a hail of bullets in Friday night’s attacks.
Mr Ranouil described scenes of carnage as he watched his friends and colleagues dying around him.
‘At first I thought it was scaffolding collapsing, because it was a very metallic sound. Then I saw people slumped on the tables, dead,’ he told MailOnline.
‘The badly injured people were brought here and put on the pavement in front of the restaurant, and also inside on the chairs and tables.
‘I knew many of them. Most of the people who worked there were already dead, including a waiter called Carlos who was a friend of mine.
‘One man was in a state of shock. He had been trying to give CPR to his sister but she died in his hands. His other sister was shot in the head, and she died later in hospital.
‘Some people were screaming in agony, but most people were silent, just trying to breathe and hold on to their life.’
Medics were so overwhelmed by numbers of wounded at the café that they were forced to leave the most seriously injured, who had no hope of rescue, in order to help those who had a chance.
Mr Ranouil, who works at Le Petit Baïona restaurant a few doors along from La Belle Equipe, played a key role in helping the casualties and did not leave the devastated café until 4am.
‘I thought that nobody should die by themselves so I went to hold their hands and talk to them.
‘One woman had been shot with several Kalashnikov bullets in her side, and she had a huge hole there, an open wound. There was nothing anybody could do. She was only about 20 years old.
‘I knelt down and talked to her. I told her not to move and to take deep breaths. She didn’t complain at all, or even say anything. She was just looking up at me and her eyes faded away.
‘I will remember her face and her eyes all my life.’
