As more details emerge from today’s terrorist attack by three Muslim assailants on the staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine, the question of how the terrorists got access to the offices has been answered. Cartoonist Corrine Rey, who survived, recounted to a French news outlet the moment when she had to make an impossible choice – the lives of her colleagues, or the life of her child.

Corinne Rey, a cartoonist for the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, says she was forced to enter the security code after returning from picking up her child at daycare, according to a local report.

“I just went to get my daughter from daycare. As I got to the front door of the building, two masked, armed gunmen brutally threatened us,” she told L’Humanité. “They wanted to enter, go up. I typed the code.”

Rey and her daughter survived the shooting after the gunmen entered the building by hiding.

Miss Rey and her daughter hid under a desk, from where they saw two other cartoonists being executed.
‘They shot Wolinski and Cabu,’ she said, ‘It lasted five minutes. I had taken refuge under a desk.
She said the men ‘spoke French perfectly’ and ‘claimed they were ‘Al Qaeda terrorists’.

I can’t even imagine what had to have been going through Rey’s head. I’m going to interpret “brutally threatened” as “open the door or we will kill you both.” I imagine something like that was said. Her daughter is a kindergartener, so no more than five or six years old. This was an impossible decision to be forced to make, the worst kind of Hobson’s choice possible. And frankly, I’m surprised the gunmen didn’t shoot both her and her daughter dead the second the code was entered and the door unlocked. I cannot judge her for her choice at all. Put a gun to my child’s head and I would likely do anything asked of me as well. And it was all over so fast. Rey and her daughter will probably take the rest of their lives to cope with the trauma and horror that befell them today.

As to those gunmen who spoke perfect French? The youngest suspect has just turned himself in:

Officials identified the suspects as Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi, two relatives both in their 30s and still at large, and 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, who is in custody.

Cherif Kouachi, 34, is on Global watch list, ABC News has confirmed.

The Kouachi brothers are French nationals of Algerian descent. Mourad, who surrendered to police, is suspected of driving the getaway car.

Victory Girls will continue to update the story as the manhunt for the killers continues.