
Gwendal Leroy
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on April 14, 2019 at 23:01
- 1 min read
- By Laurent GESLIN, Aurélia MOUSSLY
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Gwendal Leroy, 27, was injured on January 19, 2019 during the 10th week of yellow vest protests in Rennes, Brittany. AFP interviewed him at his home in La Foret-Fouesnant, northwest France, on March 8, 2019.
Why were you there?
The yellow vests has brought all sorts of people - the unemployed, workers, retired people, people with all kinds of jobs. Everyone’s together in the street, it really is a civil movement.
What happened?
We’d decided we really wanted to leave. It was 6 o’clock and we had a two-hour drive ahead of us. Heading up the road, near the bus stops, a canister landed at my feet. You hear the noise, so you say to yourself, “what’s this?” Then I saw a flash, an explosion. I immediately felt something strike my face.
In the hospital, someone came up to me and lifted my left eyelid. That’s when I knew it was bad, because he shouted, “Let’s get him looked at straight away!”
I don’t really know if I’ve accepted it, the fact that it’s for life. There are moments of realisation, like when you’re sitting on a chair and for 10-15 seconds, everything hits you, and you think, “oh yeah, I’ve lost an eye”.
What is your life like now?
Before the injury, I was a forklift operator, but I don’t know if that’s going to be possible now. Then there’s the whole “how to find a job” part. Who’s going to want to employ the person in the “only-has-one-eye” category, while there are plenty of people out there with two eyes?
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