“I ran into him in the morning around 8:40 am, he was walking back, he left with his gray Golf.
He was cool, relaxed, smiling.
"A few hours after the tragedy, his young neighbor upstairs is still struggling to understand what could have pushed Ndiaga Dieye to assault Katell L., municipal police officer stationed in the northern town of the Nantes agglomeration for nearly 20 years. .
He barely knew this forty-something, who arrived in an apartment made available by an association on his release from prison, just two months ago.
“He told us he had psychiatric problems. He could be heard talking to himself, loudly, at night. But he was nice, ”confides this neighbor. However, a few hours later, the student finds himself stuck in his class like all the children and teenagers in the schools and colleges in his town. “It was the headmaster who came to tell us not to budge from our classes. He told us it was not an exercise. We could hear the helicopter all the time, it was stressful, ”breathes Mathieu, a third year student at Legrand Beauregard college. Their Spanish teacher authorized the use of telephones. “This is where we found out what was going on. We had to go to the canteen all running together to cross the courtyard, says Paul-Hervé, a student in the same class. It was there that we learned that he had been arrested.We all started screaming. "
VIDEO.
A police officer attacked with a knife near Nantes, the suspect on file for radicalization
A few hundred meters from the establishment, the gendarmes come at that time to succeed in stopping the man wanted by nearly 300 soldiers.
In the buildings of the district which adjoin the gendarmerie, an exchange of gunshots takes place.
“We heard shooting.
The gendarmes yelled at us to go home.
I ran, and I barricaded myself at the back of the apartment, ”says Line.
“I did simulated attacks, but when it's real, it's still not the same.
It's very impressive, ”breathes Florence, who saw the fifty gendarmes present for the arrest deploy.
The inhabitants exchange videos where the shots resound as if to exorcise this moment of extreme violence which has just taken place under their windows.
The assailant was sought by nearly 300 soldiers deployed in the La Chapelle-sur-Erdre sector.
REUTERS / Stephane Mahe STEPHANE MAHE
While the news of the arrest of the madman spreads, two retirees arrive near the municipal police office with a bouquet in hand.
“We are very moved.
It is for the policewoman and the service, explains one of them to the cordon of gendarmerie.
We see her every day.
Each time, we talk, again yesterday we passed her.
Here, the municipal police are not like in the big cities.
We are very close.
"
"She's a fighter"
Katell, 47, mother of one, has been part of the town's landscape for nearly two decades. "I've always known her there," blows the owner of the bar le Cheval Blanc. It’s a shock. "Fabrice Roussel, the mayor of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre, salutes the determination of the policewoman. “She knew how to defend herself with the means she had. Thanks to his courage, we avoided the tragedy. “Wounded in the legs, in the hands, protected by her bulletproof vest, she was transported to the Nantes University Hospital. “She's a fighter,” says the captain of his badminton team. In competition, she is always ready to play and does not give up. A member of the police adds that Katell is "a great surfer" and that the policewoman is "very appreciated by the gendarmes", with whom she is in permanent contact.
To read also "Terrible attack", "despicable act" ... Political reactions after the attack on a municipal policewoman
While the impressive research device is gradually lifted and the ballet of helicopters ceases, parents arrive at school gates earlier to pick up their children.
“I was scared, I spent the day hanging on the news.
I was not well, loose Laure, her three children strapped to the back of the car.
There, I recovered them, I blow, but I had the impression to relive the attacks.
After having seen its schools partitioned off and its inhabitants confined, La Chapelle-sur-Erdre could resume a normal life.
With in the spirits, the hope that the seriously injured municipal policewoman will recover as well as possible.