A 40-year-old Sudanese man threatened passengers on a Parisian tram with a butcher’s knife on Friday night. The man, unknown to justice, was shot dead by law enforcement officers.
Around 3:00 am at the “Butte du chapeau” station in the 19th arrondissement of the capital, a man wearing a djellaba asked a man for a lighter. The man refused. Suddenly, the man pulled out a butcher’s knife and tried to strike. The victim managed to dodge the weapon and immediately dialed 17.
Once on the scene, the police asked the man to drop his weapon. Without success. “Despite repeated usage of the electric stun gun by the police, he rushed towards them, still holding the butcher’s knife,” said the Paris prosecutor’s office. Faced with the seriousness of the situation, “four police officers used their firearms about twenty times,” the prosecutor’s office added. Shocked, they were immediately taken to the hospital. None of them were physically injured.
The deceased man was identified as being born in January 1984 in Sudan and unknown to justice. Two judicial investigations have been opened. One for attempted voluntary homicide on a person in authority, the other for voluntary violence by police resulting in death without the intent to kill.
This event occurs less than six months before the Paris Olympics where 15 million visitors are expected in a tense security context. Just a reminder, on February 3, a 32-year-old Malian with psychiatric problems injured three people, one seriously, at the Gare de Lyon in Paris with a hammer and a knife.
Two months earlier, on December 2, a 26-year-old Franco-Iranian, radicalized and also followed for psychiatric problems, had attacked three people near the Eiffel Tower with a knife and a hammer, causing one death and two injuries.
