1 Dead, 4 Injured in Paris Suburb Shootings

MADRID, Spain – One person has died and at least four others have been injured in three shootings recorded on Friday morning against passers-by in several streets of two towns, Trappes and La Verrière, in the Yvelines department, some 30 kilometres southwest of Paris, with the gunman arrested and remaining in police custody according to French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.

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The attacks occurred at around 10.30am when the suspect, identified as Kevin T., fired several bursts from an automatic weapon at people in the street in neighbourhoods on the Paris outskirts characterised by their great multiculturalism. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office later announced in a statement that it has taken over the case and opened an investigation into the crimes of “murder in connection with a terrorist act, with the aggravating circumstance that the events were committed because of belonging, real or supposed, to a particular race, ethnicity, nation or religion,” as well as “criminal association with terrorist purposes for the preparation of attacks against persons.”

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez explained at midday that “an individual, in a vehicle, fired, apparently with a weapon of war or in any case an automatic weapon, at five people in different places.”

The detainee passed through the town of Trappes, where he opened fire on a petrol station, a health centre and a children’s playground, said the town’s mayor Ali Rabeh in an interview with BFM-TV, with one man dying and another wounded and “in critical condition near that petrol station,” according to Rabeh, who added that “the attacker was clearly firing at random and intended to cause a massacre,” noting that “a great many shots” were fired in bursts.

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Asked about possible racist motivations of the gunman, the mayor said that “the deceased person is of African origin and the person in critical condition is of Maghrebi origin,” but asked for patience until “the truth about his motivations” is clarified. In La Verrière, for its part, a 12-year-old girl was injured, according to Nicolas Dainville, the town’s mayor, in statements to television, adding that two other men, aged 29 and 49, were also wounded in the attack and required transfer to hospital. The mayor, while insisting on caution about the nature of the events, indicated that the perpetrator appeared to have selected his victims, specifically black people. He also said that once detained in Coignières, another nearby town, investigators identified him as Kevin, a native of Saint-Cyr, another town in the same department.