A man was arrested last night in his flat on Rue Meslay in the third arrondissement of Paris after a knife attack on Rue Saint Martin, Valeurs actuelles reported, confirming a report by Actu17.
The perpetrator, Andy A., a 31-year-old man of African descent with French nationality, is already known for “repeated death threats based on race, ethnicity, nation or religion” and is close to Islamist movements, a police source told Valeurs actuelles.
In the early afternoon, at 3pm, the man was lurking outside a hairdressing salon on Rue Saint Martin. When he threw cut-out sections from a Quran on the ground, three men came out of the shop to subdue him.
The attacker pulled a knife from his plastic bag and struck one of the men with two blows, hitting him on the inside of the right thigh and on the back, before fleeing.
The victim, a Pakistani man aged 50, was treated by the emergency services and taken to the Georges Pompidou Hospital. His prognosis is no longer life-threatening.
The identification of the perpetrator by a neighbouring shopkeeper led to the deployment of a major police operation involving the Brigade anti-criminalité (BAC), the Brigade de recherche et d’intervention (BRI) and the Groupe de soutien opérationnel (GSO) in the vicinity of his home.
The assailant was arrested by the Paris Security and Intervention Company (CSI 75) at 8.45pm, shortly after returning home. Andy A. was taken to the Sainte-Anne hospital following a psychiatric examination by the UMJ doctor.