For an interview for French TV show Le Petit Journal, a journalist squatted down next to a father and his young son, asking the boy about his reaction to the recent Paris attacks.
Brandon, and his father, Angel Le, were at the memorial outside the Bataclan concert hall to pay their respects to the victims.
When the reporter asked the boy if he understood what the memorial commemorated, Brandon replied, in French: “Yes, because they’re really, really mean. Bad guys are not very nice. And we have to be really careful because we have to change houses.”
Le then reassureed his son, as the camera continued rolling; he said they would not move because “France is our home.”
Brandon then turned to his father: “But there’s bad guys, daddy?”
Le said, “Yes, but there are bad guys everywhere.”
Brandon: “They have guns. They can shoot us because they’re really, really mean daddy.”
Le: “They might have guns, but we have flowers,” referring to the flowers placed at the memorial site.
Le told his son the flowers and candles surrounding the concert hall were there to protect them, and to remember the victims.
Brandon then offered a small smile before telling the reporter: “I feel better.”
After the news outlet posted the interview on their Facebook Page, it was shared 380,000 times in less than a day.
When Le spotted the interview on the Page, he wrote on the Page’s Wall:
“When I see all this support, it tells me one thing: I’m proud to be French and proud of my fellow countrymen!!! My family and I kiss you.”
In later interviews, Le said that his patient words came out spontaneously. “My son asked me a very hard question to answer, so I just said the first words that came into my head and what I saw was the flowers and candles,” he says.
