NICE, France (AP) – The nightmares returned to Catherine Cocampo this week – visions of a truck careening through crowds, leaving a trail of corpses behind it.
Residents of the French Riviera city of Nice lived through that nightmare in July, and are reliving it this week following Monday’s chillingly similar narrative in Berlin.
Cocampo, a 57-year-old teacher, volunteered to give psychological support to victims after the truck attack on Nice’s Bastille Day beach-side fireworks party, which killed 86 people. That attack was carried out by a Tunisian who claimed allegiance to Islamic State extremists.
“I lived again the scene the victims described to me … I had a very bad night. Bad nightmares came back,” she said after seeing the carnage from the truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market Monday.
Nice retiree Caroline Barbier can’t bear to watch the Berlin news at all. “This brings back too many memories. We need time before we can go through all this” again, she said.