Five people have been injured, two of them seriously, after a driver rammed into pedestrians and cyclists on Île d’Oléron, a popular tourist destination off France’s Atlantic coast, authorities have said.
“This morning, starting at 8.40am, an individual driving his vehicle went on a journey during which he deliberately hit several people who were in his path, either on bicycle or on foot,” the French interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said on Wednesday.
“Five people were hit during his journey, which lasted about 35 minutes,” he told reporters on the island. He confirmed media reports that the man had shouted “Allahu Akbar”, Arabic for “God is greatest”, when arrested, but said his motive was unclear.
The anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office was so far not involved, he said. The La Rochelle prosecutor, Arnaud Laraize, said the 35-year-old man, a local resident, had hit people on the road between the towns of Saint-Pierre d’Oléron and Dolus d’Oléron.
After ramming the pedestrians and cyclists, he had tried to set fire to his car before gendarmes shot him with a stun gun and arrested him, Laraize said. The mayor of Dolus-d’Oléron, Thibault Brechkoff, said the suspect was a local fisher.
The mayor of St Pierre d’Oléron, Christophe Sueur, said the suspect was “well-known, particularly by the gendarmerie, for problem behaviour, for problems with alcohol”. Several people had been taken to hospital in Poitiers by helicopter, he said.
Nuñez said two people were in a very serious condition, one of them the parliamentary assistant of the far-right National Rally MP Pascal Markowsky. The number of victims was revised down from previous reports of nine.
A local MP, Olivier Falorni, said: “We’re dealing with an individual who lives on the island, and the victims also live on the island.”
French media said investigators were looking into the possibility that the suspect might be mentally disturbed and was previously known to police for petty crime including drink-driving and drug offences. He was not on any security watchlist.
“The 35-year-old man, of French citizenship, who lives on Île d’Oléron, was known for common law offences and was not known by security services,” the junior minister Marie-Pierre Vedrenne told the French parliament in Paris.
