Macron Calls Paris-Suburb Shooting 'a Turning Point' as Terror Probe Opens
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One person was killed and five others wounded on Friday morning when a man opened fire in Trappes, a suburb of about 45,000 people in the Yvelines department south-west of Paris, in an attack President Emmanuel Macron described as racist and terrorist, The Guardian reported. The shooting, which also struck the neighbouring commune of La Verrière, lasted about 15 minutes and began at 10:30am, when shots were fired from a grey Renault Clio, the paper said. The petrol station, a medical centre and a children’s playground were targeted.
The dead man was a young Black man, French public broadcasters said, cited by The Guardian. Among the five wounded was a 12-year-old girl who was shot eight times; three of the injured were in a critical condition, The Guardian reported. The girl’s mother told the French radio station RTL that her daughter had been shot in the street.
A suspect, identified by French media as Kevin T., a 39-year-old man with four previous criminal convictions that had been expunged from his record, was arrested, The Guardian said. He was known to police but not to the country’s intelligence services and did not appear on its national security threat list, the paper reported. A relative was also detained. Sky News confirmed the arrest and reported Macron describing the attack as “a turning point”. The Paris prosecutor’s counter-terrorism branch, the PNAT, opened an investigation for the attempted murder and murder of a person in connection with a terrorist enterprise, the acquisition, possession and transfer of category A weapons, and criminal conspiracy, The Guardian said. A senior police official told BFMTV that the weapon used was a semi-automatic rifle of an older model, and Le Parisien reported it could date from the Second World War, the paper added.
Macron said the attack was “racist and terrorist” and called for respect and unity, The Guardian reported. Ali Rabeh, the mayor of Trappes, said the gunman had fired at random. “He wanted to cause a massacre,” Rabeh said, according to The Guardian, adding that the attack was “objectively racist, probably Islamophobic”.
Trappes is a rough social-housing suburb where about 40% of residents are immigrants and unemployment is around 30%, The Guardian said. The Guardian noted that the attack follows a summer of violence in France and comes as the country remains on high alert for terrorist attacks.