France: One Dead, One Cop Stabbed

The Olympic games are one week away in Paris, and it promises to be a real hum-dinger. And I’m not talking about the sports angle. I am sadly predicting there will be major problems and safety concerns in Paris. Yesterday, a Senegalese chap stabbed a police officer in the neck in Paris, apparently after having stabbed a 16-year-old to death.

The below article from today’s France 24 is translated by Fousesquawk.

 https://www.france24.com/fr/info-en-continu/20240719-attaque-au-couteau-%C3%A0-paris-l-agresseur-soup%C3%A7onn%C3%A9-d-un-meurtre-une-heure-plus-t%C3%B4t-%C3%A0-courbevoie

Knife attack in Paris: The suspect may have committed a murder earlier in Courbevoie

The man who seriously injured a police officer Thursday evening near the Champs-Elysees in Paris is suspected of having committed a murder in Courbevoie in Hauts-de-Seine, according to information gathered by Agence France Presse according to the Nanterre Public Prosecutor’s Office. The events reportedly played out one hour earlier.

Posted July 19, 2024 at 10:59. Updated July 19, 2024 at 10:57 (sic?)

Caption: Police, Gendarmes, and a soldier secure the zone in front of a Louis Vuitton boutique after a man attacked a police officer with a knife on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on July 18, 2024.

An investigation had already been opened for the “attempted murder of a police officer”. The day after the attack against a police officer near the Champs-Elysees, the Nanterre Public Prosecutor’s Office announced to AFP on Friday, July 19, that the suspect is also suspected of having struck two mortal knife blows on a 16-year-old adolescent in a Courbevoie apartment before fleeing on a two-wheeler.

The man, killed by a police shot, had already reportedly showed up at the scene of the homicide, his parents indicated. Their son was squatting in the lodging according to information given to the investigators. He showed psychiatric problems and had already fled from the family residence in  Loiret and from the psychiatric hospital.

A man “known to the police”

Later in the evening, the man wounded a police officer who had been called by a private security guard of a Louis Vuitton boutique in the 8th arrondissement of Paris to report the presence in the store of an individual armed with a knife.

Police prefecture tweet:

“Intervention in progress in the Champs-Elysees sector of Paris. Avoid the sector, let the (police) do their work. The police prefect is at the scene.”

The injured police officer, struck “in the neck near the cervical, is in urgent care, but his life is not in danger,” the Paris prefect of police, Laurent Nunez, stated Thursday evening.

According to a police source, the attacker was of Senegalese nationality and was “known to the police”.

This attack occurred eight days from the opening of the Olympic games, for which an average of 35,000 police and gendarmes will be mobilized each day.

Agence  France Presse