French Police Arrest Man After Trappes Shooting Kills One and Wounds Five

French police arrested a 39-year-old man identified as Kevin T. on Friday following a shooting spree in the Paris suburb of Trappes that left one person dead and five others injured. The attack began at approximately 10:30 a.m. local time and lasted about 15 minutes. Authorities have officially classified the incident as a racially motivated terrorist act.

The gunman drove through Trappes and La Verriere, two working-class communities on the northern outskirts of Paris known for their large immigrant and Muslim populations. He used an automatic weapon to fire at a petrol station, a medical centre, and a children's playground. Local MP Laurent Mazaury stated that the suspect told officers upon his arrest that he intended to "kill foreigners." Mazaury described the suspect as a racist.

The victim who died was named Pengo Bassio Wangi, a young Black man according to French media reports. Among the five wounded is a 12-year-old girl of North African descent who was shot eight times. Her mother said the girl was wearing a headscarf and has been moved to a children's hospital for surgery. Prosecutors indicated that three of the five injured individuals are in critical condition.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said investigations are ongoing but characterized the event as "clearly a terrorist crime." Prosecutors are examining whether the suspect conspired with a terrorist group. A member of the suspect's immediate family circle has also been taken into custody. A local police chief told French media that investigators found an older-style semiautomatic weapon from the World War II era and tear gas grenades in the suspect's vehicle.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu called the case "very serious" and stated that 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 remains determined to fight racism in all its forms.

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

The girl's mother told broadcaster RTL, "How could anyone do this to a child?" She questioned whether her daughter was targeted because of her headscarf. The mother stressed that the girl was born in Trappes and has the right to build her life in France.

The attack occurred while cost-of-living and student protests, often violent, gripped the country. Authorities plan to deploy 70,000 police officers on Saturday when more demonstrations are expected. Some far-right voices have blamed Muslim youths for the unrest, a claim that has drawn criticism from Muslim groups.

Far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen condemned the shooting as "barbaric." Muslim groups accused the populist right of fostering hatred through Islamophobic rhetoric. They pointed to Le Pen's proposal, as she campaigns for the presidency, to fine women who wear the headscarf in public. Rabeh called politicians who make negative comments about Muslims "criminals," while the French Muslim Council blamed promoters of anti-Muslim hate speech, saying they have "blood on their hands."

Monitors report that anti-Muslim hostility is growing. Last week, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for an EU strategy against Islamist entryism and the Muslim Brotherhood network. The vote was 381 to 167 with 15 abstentions. Researcher Farid Hafez of Georgetown University's Bridge Initiative called the resolution a major symbolic victory for anti-Muslim forces. Amnesty International stated in June that Islamophobic violence in the United Kingdom had reached "emergency levels," and the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency reported that one in two Muslims in Europe face racial discrimination. In the US, California's attorney general reported that anti-Muslim hate crimes rose 54 percent in 2025, increasing from 24 to 38.