A Gainesville native, who has lived in Nice, France, for the past ten months, tells WDUN's The Afternoon News Wrap, she and her husband are safe but they "knew" this day would come. However, they have no plans to leave.
Jay MacIntosh, the former Janet Jewell and the daughter of Gainesville poultry pioneer Jesse Jewell, says she and husband Steve Orlandella were out of the country when an armed truck driver drove a large transport truck into a crowd of revelers Thursday night which had gathered for a Bastille Day fireworks show, killing at least 84 of them.
Within minutes of news of the incident reaching the U.S., friends of the couple began trying to contact them, many via social media.
MacIntosh responded Thursday night about 10:30 (EDT), telling Facebook friends "we are fine - and I'm angry as hell!," while thanking their many friends "who thought about us."
Friday morning (EDT) she wrote that they were home but it had taken most of the day to get there. She said there were flight delays, some caused by the weather, and when they arrived in Nice, they found that there was no transportation from the plane to the terminal because the President of France was there.
The couple, who moved to Nice last October from Los Angeles, had been vacationing on the island of Sardinia in the Meditteranean, and was unaware of what was happening in their hometown.
"In fact," she says, "we did not know what happened until I got a text in the middle of the night, wanting to know if we were OK. It was then, 3:30 a.m., that we turned on the TV to discover the carnage happening in our hometown. Italian TV had pictures. It looks like the Promenade - where we have lunch on Sunday."
MacIntosh says they had actually been disappointed that they were going to miss Bastille Day but now feel lucky they were not at home.
"Just know that we are back home," she wrote to her Facebook friends. "We feel safe here. On the way home from the airport, everything felt normal - people on scooters and traffic as usual. Gorgeous day. Blue skies. But, this is not 'Friday, as usual'. It is 'Friday, the day after'. We knew this day could come. But, that doesn't lessen the shock when it happens."
MacIntosh said "no," when asked if what has been happening in Europe, especially France, in recent months has caused her and her husband to rethink their decision to move to France.
"We do not rethink. We made the right decision and plan to stay. We do not live in fear. We feel safer here than in the U.S."
(AccessWDUN's Russell Brown contributed to this report.)
