“Tell my kids that I love them. ” These are the last words pronounced by Simone Barreto Silva before succumbing, victim of the terrorist attack with the knife of the basilica Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, of Nice of October 29. Aged 44, this Brazilian by birth and nursing assistant by profession, was the mother of three children.
The drama began in the early hours of the morning, at 8:29 am exactly, when the terrorist entered the church. Stabbed several times, the Brazilian manages to flee the scene and finds refuge in the pizza grill restaurant Unik. “She crossed the street full of blood”, told the owner of the establishment, Brahim Jelloule, interviewed by journalists from France Televisions. At that time, the young woman “Still talking, said there was someone inside”. But seriously affected, she succumbed to her injuries an hour and a half later.
The information, confirmed by Itamaraty (the Brazilian foreign ministry) by a press release published on the night of Thursday to Friday, seized Brazil with fear. The Latin American giant, spared from Islamic terrorism, was brutally overtaken by a phenomenon that he had little control over and had until then only known from afar. The news of the death of a Brazilian woman made the headlines of all the major newspapers in the country.
A mischievous woman
Simone Barreto Silva was born in 1976, in the Lobato district, located on the outskirts of Salvador, capital of the State of Bahia. Arrived as a teenager in France with her family, thirty years ago, the Bahian, trained in cooking, was currently working as a nursing assistant in Nice with the elderly. According to the Brazilian Embassy in Paris, interviewed by The world, Simone, “Divorced and mother of three”, had “At least seven relatives of his Brazilian family, including a sister, settled in France”.
In the Brazilian media, Simone is described by those close to her as a mischievous, lively woman, with the joy of life tied to her body. “She smiled for everything, and even for nothing”, testified one of her friends on the G1 news site. A practicing and very religious Catholic, the caregiver “Was out in the morning [du 29 octobre] to work and went to church to say his prayers ”, one of her sisters explained to the Bahian newspaper Correio. “She fought against the murderer and, even injured, managed to come out of the church to call for help and alert on what was happening, so that the police would arrive, thus preventing the tragedy from being even greater”, insisted the latter.
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