Paris shooter was train driver previously charged with racist abuse: prosecutor

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PARIS – A 69-year-old gunman who opened fire at a Kurdish cultural center and a hair salon in central Paris had already been charged with racist violence, a prosecutor said on Friday.

He was suspected of assaulting at least two migrants with a knife in a Paris camp on December 8, 2021, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told reporters.

In the attack, the Frenchman, a retired train driver, also allegedly damaged several tents at the migrant camp in Parc de Bercy in eastern Paris, she said.

He was then charged with premeditated armed violence with a racist motive, and placed in detention, the prosecutor said, adding that the man had only recently been released.

She said the question of whether Friday’s attack was racially motivated will obviously be part of our investigations which now begin with the deployment of large numbers of people, she said.

Three people died Friday after the shooting in a central district of the French capital, and three others were injured.

The three people killed were members of the local Kurdish community, said David Andic, the lawyer for the Kurdish center where the attack took place. AFP, Reuters

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