By the wooden climbing frame in the shape of a pirate ship, Jean-Xavier dismounted from his bike and surveyed the piles of flowers and candles lit for the four children aged between 22 months and three who were seriously injured when a knife attacker stabbed toddlers in this lakeside playground in the French Alps town of Annecy.
“Everyone is asking why,” he said, as his own two-year-old son, who usually liked whizzing down the slides here, sat sucking a dummy and clutching a toy rabbit, strapped safely into his bike seat. “Stabbings happen a lot in France but to actually go after small children in a playground gives a different context – it’s incomprehensible.”
The physiotherapist, 33, had been on home visits close by at the time of Thursday’s attack and witnessed medical teams giving emergency aid to victims. “There’s a very heavy mood here, it’s weighing down on us, but people are standing together, it has united the town and that’s a good thing.”
There was a sense of shocked bafflement in the town as to why a 31-year-old Syrian Christian refugee who had lived in Sweden for 10 years, where he had left his wife and three-year-old child, had attacked toddlers in Annecy. He was continuing to be questioned by police over the attack, which also left two older men wounded, and he was described as being “agitated” during questioning.
The local prosecutor said there was no indication it was a terrorist attack and residents felt puzzled. Attacks targeting children are rare in France – in 2012, Mohamed Merah, a radicalised, unemployed panel beater, killed seven people including three children and a rabbi at a Jewish school in the southern city of Toulouse, and in 1993, a man describing himself as a “human bomb” held a nursery class and their teacher hostage in Neuilly outside Paris.
Stéphanie, 20, a student, laid a pink rose at the playground and looked out across the picturesque lake framed by mountains, where people in bikinis sat in pedalos. “Nothing bad ever happens here, it’s such a calm place,” she said. The lakeside town about 20 miles from the Swiss city of Geneva is consistently voted among the top 10 most pleasant places to live in France.
The attack has prompted questions about homelessness in the town. Local pedalo firm workers had seen the attacker sitting alone all day on a bench by the lake in recent weeks. He had been sleeping rough in the city centre, where shop staff said they would often see him settle in the early evening on cardboard in a doorway after brushing his teeth. Police had spoken to him a few weeks ago after he was seen washing himself in the lake. Four days before his attack, he was notified that his application for refugee status in France had failed as he had had refugee status in Sweden since 2013.
Many who gathered on Friday at the Annecy playground to show support for the parents of the injured toddlers brought their own babies and children in pushchairs. Katie Chapman, an English woman who had moved to Annecy from London, was holding her nine-month-old son, Vinnie. Her eldest son turned five on the day of the attack and had wanted to celebrate at the playground. He was at school when the attacker struck.
“We call this the pirate park. We all have good memories of it: the peace, the sunshine,” she said. “I lived in London through terrorism and riots. In a peaceful town like this, I thought had left that behind. I’m heartbroken this could happen here.”
As people tied balloons to benches and laid down stuffed toys, many said the horror of the attack had been made worse by distressing video footage that had circulated on social media.
Océane, 22, had been due to meet fellow students from her banking and financing course on the lawn near the playground minutes after the attacker struck. “What happened has really affected us and the video was traumatising – why do people film and not do something?” she said. “There’s a sadness and disbelief at what happened and I think that will stay for a long time.”
Mathilde, 38, a local public sector worker, was crying as she laid flowers at the spot where her eight-year-old daughter had played at for years. “I just want to say: if you find yourself in this situation, drop your phone and help people – I find it very hard that someone videoed the attack instead of intervening to help. It’s horrible,” she said.
“My daughter is asking me why did this man attack children? I reply: we’re all wondering that and there’s no answer. There’s no valid reason for attacking children. It’s good that people are united. Any attack is a reminder to transmit peace and love to our children. We must fight against violence and hatred.” Her colleague said it felt as if Annecy’s picture-postcard image now had a stain on it.
Among the notes left with flowers in the playground was one of “solidarity from the Syrian community”. French national politicians on the right and far-right had swiftly begun using the suspect’s refugee status in the EU to call for hardening of immigration rules, but many in Annecy said it was too early to make political points when there was still so much confusion over what had happened and why.
Despite a ban on demonstrations on Thursday night, several dozen extreme-right demonstrators singing the Marseillaise had walked to the playground carrying a French flag and shouting that France should be “kept for the French”, telling film crews the media had wrecked France by “promoting multiculturalism”.
Piera, 70, a retired estate agent who lived nearby and regularly went to the playground with her grandchildren, said Annecy was a peaceful place but the attack had left a feeling of “total insecurity, of looking over your shoulder”. She said: “If I had been here in the playground when it happened, I would have run after him despite the risk.”
Eliane, 72, a retired sales worker who swims in the lake every day, had been in the water when she heard the police shots that stopped the attacker. She had lit candles at home and come out to be part of the crowd gathered by the playground. “Annecy is such a magnificent place – we’ve got water, mountains, festivals. I never would have dreamed there would be an attack here,” she said. “It’s sad that it takes tragedies like this to bring people together.”
