Hasna Aitboulahcen, the 26-year-old female suicide bomber who blew herself up as police in Paris approached her apartment hideaway earlier this week, was a party-loving and non-religious girl who only donned her first Islamist head covering just a month ago, various media reported.
The Telegraph said friends and neighbors described her as an extrovert but "clueless," and someone who liked to wear cowboy hats. Wednesday, she earned a different title, however: Europe's first female suicide bomber, cousin to the suspected and now-dead Paris terror mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud.
As police stormed the apartment complex where Abaaoud, Aitboulahcen and several other terror suspects were holed up, she appeared at a window and shouted, "help me, help me," ostensibly, to lure law enforcement into the building, the Telegraph reported.
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In dramatic video capturing the scene, police broke into the apartment, shouting to Aitboulahcen, "Where's your boyfriend!?" She then screamed in French, "He's not my boyfriend!"
Seconds later, an explosion is heard on the video, as she detonated her suicide vest and caused the apartment floor to collapse. The blast was so violent it threw her spine into the street outside the building, the Telegraph reported.
Those who knew Aitboulahcen expressed shock at the role she played in the terror attacks.
Her brother, Youssouf Aitboulahcen, said she had absolutely no interest in religion and only just started wearing a veil a month ago.
"She spent her time criticizing everything," he said, the Telegraph reported. "She was living in her own world. She was not interested in studying her religion. I never saw her open the Koran. She was permanently on her phone, looking at Facebook or WhatsApp. I told her to stop all of this but she would not listen. She ignored my numerous attempts to give her advice."
Just three weeks ago, Aitboulahcen moved out of her home with her mother to live with a female friend in the northeast section of Paris.
Her brother said she had lived with a foster family since the age of five.
"Then, as she grew up, she went off the rails," he said, the Telegraph reported. "She became reckless, running away and choosing bad company."
A neighbor, meanwhile, described her as a "Tom boy," always dressed in jeans and sneakers. About eight months ago, however, she started wearing the niqab, he said.
"She wasn't scared of anyone," the neighbor said. "She was like a little soldier. She was very lively, very dynamic."
And still others who knew Aitboulahcen called her an extrovert who liked to drink alcohol. She earned her nickname "cowgirl" for her love of wearing cowboy hats.
The Telegraph said she tried unsuccessfully to travel to Syria to join ISIS, and then "offered her services to commit terrorist attacks on France," police said.
Police sources also said this, in the Telegraph: "Aitboulahcen had been under 'triple surveillance' from French intelligence, judges and the police for drugs' running and terror activities."