While the whole of France is focused on tracking down the Kouachi brothers after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, another tragedy hits the country the next day: a young police officer is murdered in Montrouge.
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January 8, 2015, 8 a.m. In Montrouge, a southern suburb of Paris, two municipal police officers and two road officials intervened in a traffic accident. It is still dark when, in the darkness, a man rushes towards them, pulls out an assault rifle and shoots. He hit a cleaner and a police officer, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, who succumbed to her injuries.
In the confusion, another cleaning agent rushes towards the terrorist to try to take his weapon. The shooter hit him in the head with a rifle butt. His gun jammed. He flees. Investigators quickly identified the perpetrator of the shooting: Amedy Coulibaly, close to the Kouachi brothers.
Later, the investigation would hypothesize that the terrorist was not initially targeting the police officers, but the Jewish school-synagogue Yaguel Yaacov, located 200 meters away, his plans having been thwarted by the presence of the police and arriving too early on the scene. An anti-Semitic hatred that he will put into action the next day.
DrawingCharlie Hebdo, January 7, 2015: the day of the killing