A cellphone may have saved a soccer fan's life amid the bedlam of Friday night's coordinated carnage across Paris.
The Frenchman — who was identified by Reuters only as "Sylvestre" — said he was at the Stade de France when a bomb went off nearby and debris began flying.
Sylvestre said he was holding his cellphone to his ear as he raced away from the stadium.
"Everything exploded, I felt the projectiles and everything," he said.
He later held up his phone's shattered screen.
"Here's the cellphone that took the hit, that saved me — otherwise my head would have been busted," said Sylvestre, who added that he was shot in his foot while a bullet also grazed his rib cage.
At least 129 people were killed and 352 others wounded in the attacks on concert-goers, cafe diners and soccer fans in at least six locations in the French capital. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, which included six suicide bombers wearing the same explosives-laden vests, police said.
Sylvestre's cellphone "may have been hit by a ball bearing from an explosive belt" or vest, according to an analysis by the U.S. government's Army Threat Integration Center.
"The limited damage to the phone may also indicate that the ball bearing may have lost some of its velocity by the time it hit the phone," the analysis found, adding that a trained explosives expert "capable of producing the explosive belts used in the attacks" may be present in France or elsewhere in Western Europe.
