Berkeley Student Missing in Nice, France Following Attack
Nick Leslie’s whereabouts are unknown following the truck massacre that injured three of his fellow study-abroad members. He was last seen minutes from the attack site.
Three American students from the University of California, Berkeley are among the injured in Thursday night’s attack in Nice, France, and one remains unaccounted for.
The injured students, who have not yet been named, are in stable condition. Two suffered broken legs and and a third had a broken foot, according to a news release from UC Berkeley. Friends and family are searching for Nick Leslie, 20, who was last seen before a truck drove through a crowd of revelers celebrating Bastille Day, killing 84 and wounding more than 200. Two of the dead are Americans Sean and Brodie Copeland of Lakeway, Texas.
Leslie, a junior majoring in the College of Natural Resources, and the other students were in Nice as part of a 15-day study-abroad program called Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Europe. The program has been suspended for three days to commemorate national days of mourning.
Friends have taken to social media to find him.
Classmates who were with Leslie during the celebration told friends back in the states that they saw him run ahead as the attacker drove the truck through the crowd.
“Assuming the truck was behind, it’s unlikely he would have been injured. All his friends in the group he was with are fine, so the hope is, that he’s fine,” Ani Surumpudi, a friend and schoolmate of Leslie, told The Daily Beast.
Surumpudi, who was not in Nice, said when he heard the news of the attack, he logged on to Snapchat to see if his friend was safe. Leslie’s last snap (sent around 11:30 p.m. local time) was a picture of the Florida Beach restaurant in Nice, which is about a nine-minute walk from where the attack took place.
“I thought that by the time the morning came he’d be fine and he would have turned up. We thought he was hiding out or crashing, but I’m not sure what happened,” he said.
Surumpudi also says he saw Leslie log on to Facebook a couple of times, but thinks that might have been his friends using his laptop to find his location.
“He’s a very smart, intelligent guy, very fun loving, loves to have a good time,” Surumpudi said of his friend. “He’s very kind and very open to talk whenever you reach out.”
Leslie’s uncle, who lives in Nice, told the Wall Street Journal he and his wife had been scouring local hospitals looking for him. He also Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were coming to Nice from Paris to aid in the search.