For agonising minutes the unidentified French woman hung from the balcony of the Bataclan concert hall, 15 metres above the ground, screaming for help.
“Help, help, I’m pregnant, catch me if I fall,” she shouted.
The moment was captured on mobile phone footage by Le Monde journalist Daniel Psenny, resident of an apartment overlooking the concert hall.
The woman’s ordeal ended when a man, known only as Sebastian, emerged on the balcony with his hand outstretched to pull the woman up.
He said he saw her as he fled the IS gunmen inside the concert hall, and decided to help. To reach her, the 34-year-old climbed through a window and clung onto an air vent.
“I looked towards the window and saw that it was too high to jump. So I found shelter quite stupidly outside in an air vent with my feet hanging in the air and I saw the woman who was hanging out of the window,” he told France Radio.
“She was asking people who were on the pavement, who were running away to catch her. She wanted to jump.”
She had been begging people down below to catch her if she jumped, but she got no takers.
“Nobody stopped obviously because they were still shooting,” he said.
“She said she was going to let go. One cannot watch someone die before their very eyes. There has already been too much of that.”
After he helped her they got separated, but the ordeal was not yet over.
Five minutes later, a gunman held him at gunpoint and ordered him to lie down with more than a dozen others.
“And for one hour we had two Kalashnikovs aimed at us,” he said. “So it is a blessing to still be here.”
During those hours, Sebastian said the gunmen entered into negotiations with police and had told their victims they were being punished as retribution for the suffering of people in Syria.
The shooting ended when French authorities stormed the building in a final intervention.
Sebastian said he is still making sense of what happened to him.
“I have been asked if I am traumatised; yes because it was a close call [or "I looked death in the eye"],” he said.
“I saw someone being shot one metre away from me. And I'm still wondering why it was him and not me.”
It would be days before the pregnant woman and Sebastian reconnected after she reached out on Twitter asking for help in locating and thanking her rescuer.
"We've found the man who helped my friend hoist herself through the window at Bataclan,” a tweet that formed part of the Twitter callout read. “The rest of the story belongs to them. Thank you."
Eighty-nine people were killed during the attack on the Bataclan venue. Sebastian said for the survivors, the bond linking them to each other will last forever.
“It's surreal! As powerful the nightmare may be, the pleasure of being alive is extraordinary.”
As for being described a hero, Sebastian said he is not sure the label fits.
“The true heroes have died. They have protected... they have paid with their lives so that we can be here to bear witness and enjoy life. So we are going to make the most of it and think of them on a daily basis.”
The woman and the baby are reportedly in good health.
