(Annecy) Pilgrim “in love with cathedrals”, municipal agents, math teacher on outings with students, pedal boat rental company… The knife attack that occurred Thursday morning in France on a playground near Lake Annecy revealed some hero, whose courage was hailed on Friday by President Emmanuel Macron.
Among them, Henri, 24, the most popular on social networks, is one of those who “intervened without asking any questions”, as the Head of State pointed out during a thank you ceremony. organized Friday in the salons of the prefecture of Haute-Savoie, in Annecy.
In a video authenticated by AFP, we see him trying to stop the assailant with his backpack when the man attacks the children in the playground and then chases after him when he tries to flee before leaving. to be arrested by the police.
His Instagram account, “le chant des Cathédrales” presents him as a pilgrim, a “lover of cathedrals, on foot for 9 months through France”.
“I found myself in the path of the attacker as I was preparing to leave” for another city, “quite by chance”, explained Henri to Mr. Macron, alongside a pedal boat rental company from 19, who, like him, intervened “instinctively” during the bloody attack. “It’s above all courage, gentlemen,” replied the president.
The hashtag #MerciHenri dedicated to the “backpack hero” has become very popular on the accounts of far-right activists. “I acted like every Frenchman should act,” he said on the Cnews channel on Friday morning.
“I didn’t even think about it. The brain really disconnected, for me it was just impossible to let defenseless beings be attacked in this way by someone who seemed to be a madman, ”he then explained on BFM. “We act as best we can with what we have, so there at hand was my little backpack that I was carrying in front of me”.
“You have been great”, launched President Macron on Friday before saying, visibly very moved, “his gratitude and his pride” to the police, firefighters and caregivers gathered at the prefecture.
“We took a shovel”
The mayor of Annecy, François Astorg had already praised Thursday the courage of two municipal agents who worked in the park and “tried to arrest the assailant when he was committing his crimes”.
“We were emptying containers when we heard screams coming from the kindergarten. People were calling for help, ”says one of the two road workers in the regional daily Dauphiné Libéré.
“We saw the guy coming towards us. He was dressed all in black, with his scarf over his head. With my colleague, we took what we had on hand: a shovel. And we went to meet him. My colleague tried to knock him out or disarm him with the shovel, but he was strong and fast. We could clearly see his knife. He tried to stab my colleague, the blade passed a few centimeters from his face. We had to back off,” he says. From this episode, he keeps a great regret: “Too bad we couldn’t have it with the shovel…”
Eulalie, a 17-year-old high school student, evokes for her part the role of her mathematics teacher “who was great because he acted directly”.
“He intervened with another gentleman who was holding a bag” and according to her this distracted the assailant and potentially saved children. For his part, his first reaction was “to call samu, firefighters”: “We don’t run away, we try to be efficient, my brain reacts like that, it’s unique to everyone”.