On Tuesday May 17, 2022, shortly before midnight, a couple travelling by car in the area of Chantilly (Oise) sees a man hitchhiking. The couple stops to give him a lift. The man did not speak French and asked them to take him to the Campanile hotel near the road D1016.
After arriving at their destination at around 00:20, the couple escorted the man to the reception of the hotel complex. As they have no proof of identity, the handover of keys does not take place.
“For reasons yet to be clarified, the same person then physically attacked the young woman by holding a knife to her neck,” explains the Senlis prosecutor. The woman then fled to a room behind the bar of the hotel restaurant.
I saw the woman running back to the door, bleeding profusely. When she entered the reception, she explained that he had shouted “Allah Akbar”. There was blood on the floor everywhere she ran.
Outside, “customers” intervened and gave the attacker a lot of blows, whereupon he fled. The seriously injured man was arrested by the gendarmerie 200 metres from the scene. In order to subdue him, the gendarmes used a stun gun twice, as he was behaving in a threatening manner. Two gendarmes were also injured during the arrest.
Victims and gendarmes testified that the man “seemed to be saying prayers in Arabic during the crime and during his arrest. (…) The national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office was informed. Actu Oise