A man was shot by French police on February 3, after he pointed a fake weapon at the officers. Earlier, he had spray-painted swastikas on a Paris train station. The man was severely injured and an unrelated bystander was also hurt in the incident at the Austerlitz train station in the French capital.
According to reports citing the Paris prosecutor’s office, the police approached the man after receiving complaints that he was vandalizing the station’s interior. When the man was asked to stop, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a weapon, the prosecutor’s office said, citing video surveillance footage. The station police then fired multiple shots at the man, hitting him in the lower abdomen.
The suspect, a 49-year-old man of Syrian origin, was taken to the hospital in a critical condition. By 7 pm local time, doctors had declared him “brain dead” reported Le Parisien, citing the authorities. No further information has been released about the man.
One of the bullets fired by the police ricocheted and hit a taxi driver who was in the station, injuring his foot. He was taken to the hospital and his condition is stable.
It later emerged that the man’s weapon was a fake. The prosecutor’s office said that the police were not aware of this when they shot him. Two investigations have been launched, one to investigate the actions of the police and the other to investigate the actions of the suspect.
The Austerlitz train station was closed to the public for several hours and train services were disrupted, as the police and the anti-terrorism unit Vigipirate worked at the scene.
France has been under the highest terrorism alert level since last year. Olivier Christen, the French prosecutor for counter-terrorism, stated in December that his office had launched more than 600 investigations into suspected terrorist plots in 2024, almost double the number from the previous year. Additionally, nine planned attacks were prevented, he said.