Prosecutors Charge 39-Year-Old After Fatal Shooting in Trappes

France’s capital region has seen a rise in public tensions over the past few months, but the violence in Trappes on Friday marked a distinct escalation in local conflict. A gunman killed one person and wounded five others in the northern suburb, an incident authorities have classified as both a terrorist act and a racially motivated crime.

The attack began at approximately 10:30 a.m. local time. The suspect drove through Trappes and La Verrière, two working-class communities with large immigrant and Muslim populations. He fired an automatic weapon at a petrol station, a medical centre, and a children's playground. The sequence of events lasted about 15 minutes before police detained the suspect, a 39-year-old man identified as Kevin T.

Local MP Laurent Mazaury stated that the suspect told officers he intended to "kill foreigners." Mazaury described the attacker as a racist. French media reports indicate the deceased was a young Black man named Pengo Bassio Wangi. Among the injured was a woman wearing a headscarf and a 12-year-old girl, also wearing a headscarf. Prosecutors confirmed that three of the five injured individuals are in critical condition.

The girl’s mother said her daughter, who is of North African descent, sustained eight gunshot wounds. She was transported to a children's hospital for surgery. The mother questioned whether the child was targeted because of her headscarf, emphasizing that the girl was born in Trappes and has the right to build a life in France.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez stated that investigations were ongoing but that the incident was "clearly a terrorist crime." Prosecutors are examining whether the suspect conspired with a "terrorist group." A member of the suspect's immediate family has also been taken into custody. Investigators found a World War II-era semiautomatic weapon and tear gas grenades in the suspect's car.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu called the case "very serious" and said all security and judicial resources were fully mobilized. President Emmanuel Macron described the incident as a "racist terrorist attack" and a "turning point in the life of our Republic and our nation." He said France remained determined to fight racism "in all its forms."

Trappes mayor Ali Rabeh, who has Moroccan roots, said the gunman fired at random and sought to cause a "bloodbath." Rabeh called the attack "objectively a racist attack, probably Islamophobic" and noted that the victims could easily have been his own relatives. He stated that the wounded girl's crime was "probably being of colour."

The shooting occurred while cost-of-living and student protests gripped the country. Authorities plan to deploy 70,000 police officers on Saturday for further demonstrations. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen condemned the shooting as "barbaric." Muslim groups accused the populist right of fostering hatred through rhetoric, pointing to Le Pen's proposal to fine women who wear headscarves in public.

Monitors report growing anti-Muslim hostility. Last week, the European Parliament passed a resolution by a vote of 381 to 167 with 15 abstentions, calling for an EU strategy against Islamist entryism and the Muslim Brotherhood network. Researcher Farid Hafez of Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative called it a major symbolic victory for anti-Muslim forces. The EU's Fundamental Rights Agency states that one in two Muslims in Europe face racial discrimination. In the United States, California's attorney general reported anti-Muslim hate crimes rose 54 percent in 2025, from 24 to 38.