A motorist plowed into the terrace of a café in eastern Paris on Wednesday for reasons that have yet to be determined, killing one person and injuring six people, three of them seriously, less than ten days before the opening of the Olympic Games in the French capital.
The events took place around 7:30 p.m., AFP learned from police sources and those close to the investigation.
One person died, according to a police source. Among the six injured, three were in absolute emergency and three in relative emergency, the same source said.
The theory of a road accident is “preferred at this stage” according to one of the police sources, but other sources were still calling for caution shortly before 9 p.m.
The driver of the vehicle fled on foot, but the passenger was arrested, the police source explained. He tested positive for narcotics and alcohol, according to the source close to the case.
A large police presence was in place around the terrace of the Le Ramus bar, on avenue du Père-Lachaise, where the car crashed, an AFP journalist noted.
At least four fire trucks were also nearby and soldiers from the Sentinelle unit were on duty in a nearby square.
“At full speed”
A waiter at a café 200 metres away saw the car go by “at full speed” and heard a loud noise. The car “jumped the no entry sign and sped off,” he said.
He said he approached and saw people running away, as well as a body. “They’re colleagues, they’re neighbors, I know them after all,” he told AFP, tears in his eyes.
“It’s a quiet street, nothing ever happens,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that the police arrived “very quickly.”
He saw two women taking out boxes of bandages to try to help victims.
This tragedy comes less than ten days before the opening of the Olympic Games, for which some 35,000 police and gendarmes as well as 18,000 French soldiers will be mobilized on average each day.
From Thursday, at 5 a.m., and until July 26, the internal security and counterterrorism perimeter (SILT) will be activated in Paris around the banks of the Seine, in preparation for the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games.
Some 326,000 spectators – 104,000 paying seats on the lower quays, 222,000 free seats on the upper quays – are expected on July 26 to attend the opening ceremony on the Seine, the first in the history of the Games to take place outside a sports venue.
The Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games “are not the subject of specific targeting by international terrorist organisations”, assured the national anti-terrorism prosecutor Olivier Christen on Tuesday, while nevertheless stressing the “resurgence” of the terrorist threat for “the entire territory”.
Further details will follow.