French 'scooter shooter' mystery as three crimes linked

Mystery surrounded the motives of the shooter who killed four at a French Jewish school yesterday after it emerged the same gun and scooter were used in two nearby deadly attacks on paratroopers last week.

The shooter was waging war

The three shootings have taken place at precise four-day intervals, the first on March 11 when a gunman on a scooter shot dead a paratrooper in civilian clothing at point-blank range in southwestern city Toulouse.

On March 15, a gunman on a scooter shot dead two more airborne troops, this time in uniform, in the garrison town of Montauban, just 46 kilometres away. Another trooper from the same regiment was seriously wounded.

Then, yesterday, the same gun and scooter used in the previous attacks were used to murder three children and a teacher at the Ozar Hatorah school, also in Toulouse, in what was universally condemned as an anti-Semitic attack. French anti-terrorist prosecutors have linked the school shooting with the soldier murders, raising fears that a serial killer was on the loose.

All three attacks were carried out by the rider of the same powerful scooter, a stolen 500cc Yamaha T-MAX, using the same .45 calibre weapon, who witnesses described as calmly shooting his victims at point-blank range.

In Montauban, witnesses told how the killer had time to turn over one of the wounded men who was trying to crawl away and fire three more shots into him before getting back on his scooter and making his escape.

In yesterday’s killings, the shooter opened fire outside the­­ school with a 9mm calibre weapon, which jammed.