The four people held hostage since 1 p.m. this Saturday in a pizzeria in Issy-les-Moulineaux by a man armed with a knife were released around 4 p.m., a police source told AFP, specifying that the had been arrested. The intervention took place without incident, there were no injuries, this source said.
“Three or four employees”
It was just before 1 p.m. that a man armed with a knife took refuge in his parents' pizzeria, with “three or four employees”, a police source told AFP. A little earlier, the Paris fire brigade (BSPP) had indicated to AFP that the entrenched man “detains a few employees”. What the police source confirmed: he retained “three or four employees”, but there was neither “customer nor public”, she had specified.
A BIS mediator on site
A mediator from the BRI (Research and Intervention Brigade, an elite unit of the Paris police) had been “hired, due to the person concerned’s desire to commit suicide”. The role of mediators is to enter into negotiations with the madmen. This is a man “with a drug addiction profile” according to a source close to the case, and who according to a police source had already “committed similar acts” at his home in 2022 “with the threat of suicide”. He is also not known to the courts.
Large security perimeter
A large police force had been put in place and surrounded the restaurant a few dozen meters from the Paris ring road, AFP journalists noted on site. The iron curtain of the pizzeria with its bright red front was lowered. Several nearby restaurants were also closed. The police had installed red and white tape to block access to a large perimeter, and asked the many curious residents of neighboring buildings to move away from their windows. In the street a lot of police officers are visible, some wearing helmets and armed, as well as numerous police cars and fire trucks. Around twenty agents, orange armbands on their arms, stood in front of the restaurant.
“Intervention in progress, let the security and emergency forces work,” wrote the police headquarters on course “.
