A knife-wielding man has been shot and killed by French police on Jan. 3 after he killed one and wounded three others.
The attacks happened at about 2 p.m. local time (8 a.m. EST) in the Des Hautes-Bruyètes Park, about 5 miles south of Paris, where the attacker started to stab people randomly.
French counter-terrorism prosecutors said they were assessing the crime scene.
Loïc Travers, a police union spokesman, said: “No one can be sure at this stage whether this was a terrorist act,” The Telegraph reported.
France’s Deputy Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, who visited the scene within two hours after the attack, called the way the police intervened an “extremely courageous act,” the BBC reported.
The deadly victim is identified as a 56-year-old male local who allegedly was stabbed in the neck when he tried to defend his wife. He died later at the hospital.
The victim “was walking with his wife when the attacker approached; he wanted to protect his wife and it was he who received the knife blows,” said Villejuif Mayor Franck Le Bohellec, France 24 reported.
After the stabbings, the attacker fled the park and headed towards the nearby suburb of L’Haÿ-les-Roses where he was shot by police officers who feared he might detonate an explosive belt.
Police kept several hundred people inside a shopping center near the scene of the attack to make sure the area was safe before allowing them to leave.
“Luckily, the police were quickly alerted and made their way rapidly to the scene where they neutralized him by killing him,” Vincent Jeanbrun, a mayor in the area, told BFM-TV.
Jeanbrun added: “People are really shocked and worried and they’re saying this could happen anywhere at any time, but they are relieved that the police intervened rapidly,” The Telegraph noted.