Wexford law student Cian Ryan marched in solidarity with over one million other people in Paris on Sunday afternoon following terrorist attacks which resulted in the deaths of 17 people.
A 20-YEAR-OLD law student taking part in an Erasmus year in Paris witnessed the shock and paranoia which infected the city following terrorist attacks by Islam extremists on Wednesday and Thursday of last week.
Cian Ryan, the son of former councillor Joe Ryan and his wife Therese, has been studying in Nanterre, a university on the west side of Paris since September and is one of a small number of Irish students in the college. He had returned to France after the Christmas holidays just a few days before the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo office and a Jewish supermarket and was preparing for exams when tragedy struck.
Cian told The Echo: “I was actually doing an exam on the day of the tragedy so my parents messaged me – they had heard about it before I did but I told them that I was safe and everything was ok where I was.”
Cian’s college U.C.C. also text him to see if everything was ok but did not receive an immediate reply because he was in an exam: “When I came out I had two messages from them, the second wondering why I hadn’t replied to the first one so I think they were more frantic than my parents were!”
Cian’s father and former Labour councillor Joe Ryan said that he had contacted his son at 1 p.m. through Facebook: “I didn’t actually hear it until lunchtime because I was teaching all morning. I opened Facebook and saw that Cian was online so we spoke and he told us he was safe so we were happy enough.”
[Full story and reaction to last week’s tragedy in this week’s Echo]