Late Tuesday afternoon, a man armed with knives was shot dead by a municipal police officer, near the Saint-Étienne Christmas market. 20 Minutes takes stock.
What happened?
From 5 p.m., the “very agitated” behavior of an individual traveling on foot in the center of Saint-Etienne challenged municipal agents at the urban supervision center. They spotted him via the city's surveillance cameras and decided to send patrols to control him, reports Progress.
According to prosecutor David Charmatz, this man, whose identity is not yet known, was “aggressive” by chasing pedestrians while brandishing his knives.
When the man arrives at the tram stop, located at the corner of rue du Grand-Gonnet and rue Charles-de-Gaulle, he takes a sixty-year-old woman hostage who had just done her shopping by putting a knife to the throat. Municipal police officers, who arrived on site, intervened. Faced with danger, one of the officers fired his service weapon once to neutralize him. It was around 5:30 p.m.
Are there other victims?
Abdel, manager of a mobile phone store, was busy in his store with customers at the time. “I heard shots,” he said on the spot. “I came out and saw there were cops in a circle. […] They started cardiac massage until the firefighters arrived.” Emergency services were unable to resuscitate the man who died.
The woman who was attacked was slightly injured, according to the prosecutor who immediately went to the scene. No other injuries have yet been reported.
Who was the threatening man?
The deceased man was aged 20 to 30 and did not have any identification on him. His body was placed under seal for identification, said another police source.
Shortly before the events, according to this source, he had entered a store declaring that he was going to “wreak carnage on the Christmas market”, located a few hundred meters from the place where he was shot, without making any allusion for any religious reason. As it stands, the attack does not seem to have “any terrorist dimension”, however, David Charmatz clarified.
Where is the investigation?
Two investigations were opened by the Saint-Étienne public prosecutor's office, one to understand the background of this man, the other for murder regarding the fatal shooting of the police officer.
“I salute the responsiveness, the professionalism, the composure of the municipal police officers who were the first responders on site,” praised the city’s mayor Gaël Perdriau, who also visited the scene. “In ten years that the municipal police have been armed in Saint-Étienne, this is the first time that they have opened fire,” he insisted.
The police were equipped with pedestrian cameras and the scene was filmed by video surveillance, he said, hoping that this would help investigators retrace the scene.
The FO union of Saint-Etienne municipal police officers testified in a press release to its “empathy towards these agents and more particularly towards the agent who had to use his service weapon, as part of his missions for the protection of the people of Stéphane, with the consequences that this implies.”
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