One Killed as Paris Drive-By Shooting Investigated as Terrorism
A gunman killed one person and wounded five, three of them seriously, in drive-by shootings in two towns south-west of Paris. A twelve-year-old girl was shot eight times and is in a stable condition. A 39-year-old man known to police, but not to the intelligence services, has been arrested.
The rampage ran through Trappes and then La Verrière in the Yvelines, taking in a petrol station, a medical centre and a playground, and lasted just under a quarter of an hour before five officers from the anti-crime brigade stopped it. The national anti-terrorist prosecutor has taken the case, opening it for murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise — but has also, pointedly, urged caution about the identity of the victims, and the interior minister says the motive remains unclear. The mayor of Trappes has gone much further, calling it “probably one of the first attempted mass killings motivated by Islamophobia and racism”; that is his characterisation and not a finding of the investigation. Even the weapon is disputed, described by one police account as an older semi-automatic and by the interior minister as “a military-grade weapon, or at least an automatic weapon”. Separately, and not connected to this attack, France is bracing for a fourth weekend of protest: some 70,000 officers are being deployed, Paris’s curfew runs to Monday, and the Louvre will close on Saturday.