An Egyptian man on vacation in Nice came face to face with the driver of the truck who plowed into the holiday crowd.

Nader El Shafei, a former banker from Cairo, recounted the terrifying moments in the lobby of the Hotel Mercure to freelance journalist Linda Hervieux. After the truck plowed into the crowd — "He smashed into a lot of people" — El Shafei walked in front of the vehicle and waved his arms at the driver.

"I was waving to the driver 'Stop, there's a girl under the truck.'

"I saw him pick up a phone, I thought, and at this point I still think it's an accident and then I see he pulls out a gun. It looked like a handgun, a Glock. He pulled it out and I understood something was wrong ... and then I see the police shooting him."

Everyone started running, he said. The cops were yelling at him to get out of the way.

"I couldn't run," he said. "I was just frozen."

He said that when he was on the promenade, the though of terrorism crossed his mind.

"Five minutes before this happened, I thought in this peaceful place somebody crazy could do something."

"I'm used to all of these actions in the Middle East but I was never this close to it. I said to my friends, 'Now we can’t go to Europe to escape the Middle East. Now the Middle East can happen anywhere."