7:48 p.m., Christmas market in Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin), December 11, 2018. Suddenly, among passers-by on a street in the city center, shots ring out.
Maria's
(first name has been changed)
brain records the killer's posture, the way he is dressed and "his eyes."
“He was 2 m from us.
When I saw my friends fall in front of me, I no longer felt my body.
I was running but I didn't feel it anymore.
I didn't feel anything anymore.
I was sure I had been hit.
»
That evening, the young Italian and the three other students from their small international university radio team decided to take a trip to the Christmas market, this joyful and cosmopolitan event symbol of the Alsatian capital.
Maria had just grabbed her friend by the arm to look at a window when Antonio and Piotr (known as “Barto”) collapsed.
Fatally shot in the head by the cold and deliberate shots of Chérif Chekatt, 29 years old.
This radicalized repeat offender from the Strasbourg district of Neudorf was their age.
That evening again, armed with an old 8 mm Lebel 1892 revolver and a kitchen knife, he murdered three other people and injured eleven, spreading panic along his route.
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