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A Brigham Young University student in Paris believed the explosion he heard Friday at the soccer match against Germany was a cannon's celebratory blast.
But the sound came from a suicide bomber who'd set off his vest outside the stadium entrance that Dennis Meservy had passed through moments beforehand, late in arriving to the exhibition game.
Meservy is one of about two dozen Utah college students abroad in France, each accounted for, according to their universities, after a series of deadly attacks that killed more than 120 people in the nation's capital.
Earlier on Friday, Meservy told his mother in a Facebook message that he was going to a soccer game after work. When his parents and siblings saw news reports on the explosions and gunfire outside the soccer stadium and at a concert hall, a restaurant and a bar, they called him repeatedly. There was no answer.
Meservy's brother, also a BYU student, phoned the American Embassy and put Dennis, who also goes by Ned, on a missing persons list. After about three hours, the family managed to reach him.
"He said, 'Everything's OK,' " and told them he would sleep at a friend's place who lived closer to the stadium, his mother, Mara Meservy, said.
The European studies major who is interning in Paris this semester was asked by his supervisors in the wake of the violence not to talk to reporters, his mom said Monday from the family's Las Vegas home.
"It was scary, but we were very grateful," she said. "I wish all the moms could be saying the same thing right now."
The attacks, which the militant Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for, took the life of at least one U.S. college student. Nohemi Gonzalez, a senior at California State University, Long Beach, was at the Strate College of Design in Paris during a semester abroad program. Gonzalez was with another student when she was fatally shot at a restaurant, Cal State officials said over the weekend.
The Meservy family's scramble to find their youngest son highlights both the challenges and the upside of a digital world where instant news coverage can send loved ones into a frenzy — and social media can help locate them.
"Students can kind of get hit from all sides when these things happen," said Beth Laux, director of the University of Utah's Center for Learning Abroad. "Families find out right away."
In such emergencies, Laux's center works with the foreign partner schools, host families, and internship directors and families back home in order to reach students. They make calls and send emails and messages on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
"The first priority," Laux said, "is to confirm that our students are safe."
Laux's staff initially could not get a hold of one student who was staying 250 miles south of Paris in Lyon, France's second-biggest city. Employees eventually reached an emergency contact, said university spokeswoman Jana Cunningham. The center has a policy of not releasing names.
Until Friday, the most recent threats to student safety, Laux said, were 2011's Arab Spring and the 2005 London transit bombings.
So far, none of the students studying abroad through her programs have told her center they are coming home early. And next semester's programs are still on.
"It's a little bit early," Laux said. "I think the situation is still evolving."
At the urging of his family, Dennis Meservy has agreed to come home a week early and will arrive on Monday, said Mara Meservy.
BYU, a private university, had more students studying or interning in France at the time of the attack than Utah's other colleges.
In total, 17 BYU students — plus one faculty member — were found to be safe, university spokesman Todd Hollingshead said in an email Monday.
Andrew Rouse, an international studies major from the U., is interning in Nice through a partnership with the school's Hinckley Institute of Politics, Cunningham said.
"It is a tragic day for a country I have come to love," Rouse said in an email to the U.'s student newspaper, The Daily Utah Chronicle. "And I express my sincere condolences for the people of Paris."
Administrators at Southern Utah University said they hurried Friday to check in with two students based about 200 miles from Paris in the city of Poitiers, home of a management school that SUU partners with. One classmate, Madeline Baker, was traveling in Italy at the time. Ryan Melling also was out of the country, said university spokeswoman Ellen Treanor.
A young woman studying in France through Utah State University and another from Westminster College were also found to be safe.
Spokespeople for Utah Valley University and Weber State University said they believed no students were visiting or attending school in France last week.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Twitter: @anniebknox