The police opened fire on a woman making terrorist threats at the RER Bibliothèque François Mitterrand station in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. She was injured and hospitalized. The RER station was quickly evacuated and remained closed for part of the day. This police intervention occurred in a context of tension in France following the Arras attack and the war between Israel and Hamas.
During a press conference, the police prefect of Paris, Laurent Nuñez, stated that this woman had been reported by passengers on the RER in Val-de-Marne at around 7:20 am. The first report came from a passenger in Choisy-le-Roi, and the second came from a call to the SNCF emergency number. The police prefect of Paris also praised the “reactivity of the police forces”.
The woman had made threats such as “You will all die” or “Allah Akbar”. The Paris public prosecutor’s office stated on Tuesday evening that the police were waiting for this woman on the platform of the RER C at the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand station after receiving the report. “The woman was sitting next to two large bags, and smoke was coming from nearby,” the prosecutor’s office reported. The police therefore evacuated the platform to allow the bomb squad to intervene.
Laurent Nuñez also indicated that “this person stood up and approached the police officers” despite their orders. “Despite their repeated demands, the woman did not respond to any questions, approached the police officers, while keeping her hands invisible under her abaya,” the prosecutor’s office reported.
The police then fired several times, eight times according to the prosecutor’s office. After checking, it turned out that the bags did not belong to this woman and the smoke came from a “kettle that was initially not visible to the police,” according to the prosecutor’s office.
According to several reliable sources contacted by Franceinfo, the woman was injured in the abdomen and hospitalized. She underwent surgery and is still in intensive care, according to the prosecutor’s office.
The identity of the woman has been confirmed. She is 39 years old and resides in Val-de-Marne. She has already been arrested once in 2021 for damaging a scooter with a screwdriver and for threatening soldiers from Operation Sentinelle with the same tool, according to the prosecutor’s office, which specified that “her custody was lifted due to her hospitalization against her will.” Later, she explained that she was “in a psychotic state” at the time of the incident.
According to sources close to the investigation, contacted by France Inter and Franceinfo, her profile had already been discussed during a meeting of a departmental evaluation group on Islamist radicalization (GED), but she was not listed as a high-priority security risk.
The prosecutor’s office specified that two investigations have been opened, one entrusted to the Paris judicial police for “apology, death threats, and intimidation of a public authority”, and the other entrusted to the IGPN for “voluntary violence with a weapon by a person in a position of authority”, regarding the use of the firearm.
