Paris authorities are officially treating Thursday’s fatal shooting of a police officer, the second act of deadly violence the area has seen in as many days, as an act of terror.
A female police officer was fatally shot and a maintenance worker was injured when a gunman opened fire in Montrouge, a suburb south of Paris. The officer was responding to a traffic accident, according to the Associated Press.
The Agence France-Presse reported that police detained one man after the shooting, but later released him because he wasn’t the shooter.
There were differing accounts about what the shooter looked like.
A witness, Ahmed Sassi, told the AP that he saw the shooting from his nearby home. The gunman was dressed in all black but wore no mask and appeared to be carrying a small weapon, Sassi said.
Appearing on-air, CNN’s Jim Bittermann cited eyewitnesses to the shooting who said the attacker was wearing a mask and a bulletproof vest over black clothing and carried an automatic weapon. That attire would be similar to that worn by the gunmen in Wednesday’s attack on a satirical newspaper that left 12 dead.
A report from Sky News also raised the possibility of a second shooter in the incident in Montrouge. Citing French newspaper Le Parisien, Sky News said one shooter fled toward a nearby metro station while another fled by car. That information does not appear to have been reported or confirmed by other news outlets.
The anti-terrorist unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office was investigating the shooting in light of Wednesday’s deadly attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper offices in Paris. They were concerned about the heavy weaponry the attacker carried and the “deliberate nature of an act targeting security forces,” according to the Agence France-Presse.
Officials had cautioned against linking the shooting to Wednesday’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices earlier Thursday.
