Macron meets victims and ‘backpack hero’ after stabbing in France

One day after one violent stabbing Injuring six people, including four children, President Emmanuel Macron traveled to southeastern France on Friday to meet recovering victims and a bystander hailed as “the backpack hero” after he tried to stop the attack by running his bag at the attacker. to wave .

Mr Macron and his wife, Brigitte, arrived at a hospital in Grenoble, about 95 kilometers south of Annecy, the Alpine town where a day earlier a man went on a rampage with a stiletto knife and fell before police at bystanders and families with pushchairs . officers arrested him.

Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said on Friday that the children, all aged 3 or under, have had surgery and are in stable condition.

The suspect was identified by French authorities as a homeless Syrian man who had obtained refugee status in Sweden ten years ago and arrived in France last fall, where his application for asylum was rejected due to his existing status in Sweden.

People brought flowers and lit candles to a makeshift memorial near the lakeside park in Annecy where the attack took place, a mostly quiet place where tourists and locals come to relax and enjoy views of the surrounding mountains.

After meeting with the victims and their families, Mr Macron was reported to meet with a 24-year-old man known to the French public only as Henri, who was widely praised after intervening in the attack.

Henri, who did not give his last name in interviews with the French media, told BFMTV that he was in the park in Annecy, one of many stops on a nine-month hitchhiking journey to visit the cathedrals of France, when he spotted the attacker. He initially thought the man was trying to steal someone’s wallet, he said, until he saw him attacking children.

“Then your brain switches off and you instinctively behave like an animal,” said Henri. “I wasn’t even thinking.”

In poignant video clips posted on social and mainstream media, Henri can be seen waving a small black backpack at the attacker – a man dressed in black, sunglasses and a scarf around his head – and holding him off. Other bystanders also tried to run after the attacker and help the injured children, Henri said.

As the man ran away, Henri dropped a larger 40-pound bag that he carried on his back to continue chasing him and continued to wave the backpack at him. A city employee with a long plastic shovel also arrived and tried to fend off the attacker, Henri said.

“You try to act the way you can, with what’s at your disposal,” he said.

In the video clips, the attacker can be heard saying “In the name of Jesus Christ” in English before running at people with a knife and lunging.

French media reported that he had told immigration authorities that he was a Christian and that he was wearing a cross at the time of the attack, and Gérald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said told TF1 television Thursday evening that police officers who rushed to the scene on Thursday had witnessed “religious signs, Christian signs”.

Henri, who said he was a practicing Catholic, said he stayed in the park to pray after police arrested the attacker. “It’s deeply anti-Christian to attack completely innocent people,” he said, adding, “Anyone would have done what I did.”

The public prosecutor’s office in Annecy said the suspect is still in custody and is being questioned by police. The case is not being treated as a terrorist incident, its motives remain unclear.

French authorities have not fully identified the suspect, saying only that he was a Syrian refugee who had obtained asylum in Sweden in 2013 and lived there for 10 years before moving to southern Europe.

In an interview with the Agence France-Presse news agency, the man’s mother, who lives in the United States, said he fled Syria in 2011 because of the civil war there and reached Sweden after traveling through Turkey and Greece.

His ex-wife, also a Syrian refugee who was granted asylum in Sweden, told the Agence France-Presse that she met the man in Turkey, later married him and had a child, but that he decided to leave Sweden last year after he failed to become a Swedish citizen.

The man arrived in France legally last October, said Mr. Darmanin, but the French authorities rejected his asylum application on the grounds that he had already obtained refugee status in Sweden. The man was informed of this rejection on Sunday, a few days before the attack.

“It’s a disturbing coincidence,” said Mr. Darmanin.

The suspect had no criminal record and had never been spotted by French security services, said Mr. Darmanin, but police checked him last Sunday because he was washing in Lake Annecy. The man was scheduled to undergo a psychiatric evaluation on Friday.