Paris shooter has "pathological hatred of foreigners" - prosecutor
The Paris shooter who killed three on Friday has "a pathological hatred of foreigners" and organized the attack "to kill foreigners," Paris prosecutor said on Sunday.
The 69-year-old man identified as William M. by the French media was arrested after shooting two men and a woman dead at a Kurdish cultural center and nearby Kurdish cafe in the French capital's busy central 10th district.
The suspect said during questioning that a burglary at his home in 2016 had triggered a "hatred of foreigners that became totally pathological", prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in a statement.
He also said he first went to the mostly immigrant Paris suburb of Saint-Denis to kill foreigners on the day of the attack. But seeing fewer people there, he said he walked to the rue d'Enghien in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, where he knew that Ahmet Kaya Kurdish Cultural Center was in this neighborhood.
Defining all the non-European foreigners as “enemy,” he said he shot at them without knowing who they were, and his only regret was being unable to kill himself.
After being transferred to a psychiatric unit on Saturday, the suspect was discharged from hospital and his police custody resumed on Sunday afternoon, the prosecutor's office said in a later update, adding he would be presented to an investigating magistrate on Monday.
According to the media, William M., the retired train driver from SNCF, was convicted of armed violence in 2016 by a court in Saint-Denis but appealed. A year later, he was also convicted of illegally possessing a firearm.
More recently, in 2021, he was charged with a racist attack after he allegedly stabbed migrants and slashed their tents with a sword in a park in eastern Paris.
