As rioters have left a trail of destruction across France, one shopkeeper channeled his inner hero to defend his store’s doors.
A man known only as Pierre has become an online hero for his recent defense of the video game store he works at in Nice, France, with his image likely to live on forever as a meme.
“I can’t intellectualize what happened,” he said. “Maybe it will come a little after the battle.”
Pierre is a salesman at Micromania, a chain owned by GameStop, in Nice. During the weekend violence that gripped France, he stood up to rioters who were attempting to break into the store, which already had its security doors down and front door broken.
In a video viewed by over 4 million people, Pierre marched down one rioter who taunted him. But as he walked back to his entrance, he was blindsided from behind with a kick.
However, Pierre got right back up and later calmly adjusted his glasses while remaining steadfast at the entrance. To make his story even more iconic, he was pictured in the doorway alongside a life-sized photo of the popular anime character Goku from the show “Dragonball Z.”
