Known by several identities, the individual in his twenties suffered six stab wounds before being neutralized.
The man who stabbed several people on Wednesday at the Gare du Nord, in the 10e arrondissement of Paris, was subject to an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) since the summer of 2022. The suspect did not have identity documents on him at the time of his arrest. Aged about twenty years, it could be a Libyan or an Algerian specifies the parquet floor. This individual who arrived in France in 2019 was confused by his fingerprints. A priori stuck for common rights cases, he was housed in Seine-Saint-Denis and would have been in prison, which the justice system had not confirmed on Wednesday evening. “We are not moving away to Libya. Firstly given the country’s instability. Secondly because we do not have an exchange channel for the identification of nationals”indicates the Ministry of the Interior, which once again feels the wind of controversy coming three months after the Lola affair.
At the first stage of the investigations, the investigators are cautious about the motivations of the attacker. There was no evidence on Wednesday evening to suggest a terrorist attack, according to a source familiar with the matter. The terrorist hypothesis “is not privileged”we blew a few hours after this sudden burst of violence which stunned the users of the SNCF.
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According to a scenario that remains to be established, the dazzling attack lasted less than two minutes. At 6:42 a.m., an unknown person, described by witnesses as being of short stature and wearing a light coat, emerged from the crush. He then pulls out a makeshift weapon and strikes around twenty blows at his first victim. “It is a metal hook whose longest part ends in a point, surrounded on its major part by a string allowing a better grip”, says the prosecution. As people were screaming “stop it! », two border police officers (PAF), on patrol at the level of the access staircase to the Eurostar, intervened at 6:43 a.m. Contrary to allegations broadcast on social networks, the assailant did not would not have uttered a verbal threat when taking action at lanes 16 and 17. The report shows six injured victims. They are two men aged 36 and 41, users of the station, a 46-year-old policeman assigned to the border police (PAF), and three women aged 40, 47 and 53, users of the train station. Only the 36-year-old man was still hospitalized on Wednesday evening, his vital prognosis not being engaged.
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The wounded assailant
One of the police allegedly tried to surround the attacker who injured him with his punch. His colleague would have immediately drawn his revolver before opening fire while a police officer from the Ile-de-France network brigade (BRF), who was returning home and carrying his weapon as he was authorized to do so, also shot the assailant. Hit by two bullets in the chest and a third in the arm, the attacker was evacuated from the station and taken to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital (13e) under police escort.
The criminal brigade has been entrusted with the investigation opened by the prosecution for “attempted murder”. As is customary after shooting by the police, the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN) was also seized. After the broadcast on the @MaudPK Twitter account of a video entitled The images of the attack this morning, Gare du Nordthe Paris prosecutor’s office immediately opened an investigation for violation of the secrecy of the investigation.