On Friday, November 14th, in the Montparnasse train station in the center of Paris, a man with a history of domestic violence brandished a knife towards the police and was subsequently shot by officers. After being shot, the man then proceeded to cut his own throat with the knife.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that a police officer had hit the 44-year-old man in the leg. The man then used the knife to inflict wounds on himself. He was then urgently taken to the hospital with serious injuries. The prosecutor’s statement indicated that a bullet also hit a bystander’s foot.
“A 53-year-old bystander was shot in the foot and also received treatment from emergency personnel,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
According to a police source speaking to Reuters, the man had threatened his wife and children in a Paris suburb before taking a train to the Montparnasse station. Local authorities were already waiting for him at the station due to a domestic violence investigation.
When confronted by the police, the man waved the knife at them and threatened suicide. The police then opened fire.
The timing of this incident, occurring the day before the 10th anniversary of the coordinated terrorist attacks by ISIS in Paris in 2015, which resulted in 132 deaths, heightened sensitivity. The unexpected event on Friday caused commuters and weekend travelers at the station to momentarily plunge into extreme panic.
A witness named Elvire Vaisse told Reuters, “The memory of the November 13, 2015 attack is still fresh. I thought to myself, ‘Here we go again.’ I suddenly felt very nervous.”
Another witness told BFM TV, “It took me two or three seconds to realize what was happening. People started shouting, ‘We need to get out of here, run!’ That made my heart race, and I got up and ran as fast as I could.”
The police immediately evacuated the crowd at the Montparnasse station. The prosecutor’s office stated that the man had been sentenced to 18 months probation in September of this year for multiple incidents of domestic violence.
The French railway operator SNCF stated that after the police intervened, a “small portion of the station area” was cordoned off with a security perimeter, causing minor disruptions to traffic.