PARIS (Reuters) – A 45-year-old IT assistant at the police headquarters in central Paris went on a knife rampage inside the building on Thursday, killing three police officers and an administrative worker before he was shot dead by an officer, French officials said.
Officials did not say anything about the motive for the attack and they said they were still trying to discover if there was a terrorism link.
The area around the police headquarters, which is close to Notre-Dame Cathedral, was sealed off and a metro station was shut for security reasons as the attack unfolded.
The dead were three men and a woman, according to Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz. Another person was wounded and is undergoing surgery.
Heitz said police were searching the attacker’s home, and that anti-terrorist investigators were evaluating what had happened, for any terrorist links. The attackers wife had been brought into police custody but not charged, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
Speaking outside the police headquarters, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said the attacker was known to his colleagues and had worked for some time in the IT department.
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