Dramatic footage shows the moment a man suspected of stabbing four children, including a 22-month-old toddler, in a horror attack is taken down by police officers
The 31-year-old suspect, identified as Abdalmasih H, was chased by a number of gun-wielding cops after the daytime attack in the town of Annecy, in the French Alps.
Footage shows a number of officers running behind the suspect while an innocent man tries to escape from the knifeman - and at some point, a gunshot is heard.
It appears to strike the victim who collapses to the ground, with the attacker then laying into the other man before cops arrive and handcuff him.
As the suspect is detained, he appears to be panting aggressively into the ground while the other man who was injured screams in pain.
French prosecutors said the man was hurt with the attacker's knife and also by a shot fired by officers who arrested the knifeman.
Authorities said the suspect had recently been refused asylum in France because Sweden had already granted him permanent residency and refugee status a decade ago.
Witnesses reported scenes of terror as the man roamed the park, ambushing victims with his blade.
"I said to the police, ‘Shoot him, kill him! He’s stabbing everyone,'" Anthony Le Tallec, a former professional soccer player who was jogging when he came across the attacker, said.
Lead prosecutor Line Bonnet-Mathis said the man's motives were unknown but did not appear to be terrorism-related.
He was armed with a folding knife, she said.
She said all four children suffered life-threatening knife wounds. The youngest is 22 months old, two are age 2 and the oldest is 3, she said. Two of them are French, the other two were tourists — one British, the other Dutch, she said.
Video appearing to show the attack in and around a children's play park was posted on social media. The footage showed a man in dark glasses and with a blue scarf covering his head brandishing a knife, as people screamed for help.
The man appeared to shout "in the name of Jesus Christ" as he waved his knife in the air, while people nearby could be heard screaming: "Police! Police!"
He slashed at a man carrying rucksacks who tried to approach him. Inside the enclosed play park, a panicked woman frantically pushed a stroller as the attacker approached, yelling "Help! Help!" and ramming the stroller into the barriers around the site in her terror.
She tried to fend off the attacker but couldn't keep him from leaning over the stroller and stabbing downward repeatedly. Afterwards, the man strolled almost casually out of the park, letting himself out through a gate, with the man carrying two rucksacks still chasing after him.
French President Emmanuel Macron described the assault as an "attack of absolute cowardice".
"The nation is in shock," Macron tweeted.
Le Tallec, the ex-football player who witnessed the attack, said in an Instagram video that he first came across "a mother who said to me, ‘Run! Run! There’s someone stabbing everyone".
"I saw him sprinting straight for some grandpas and grandmas. And there, he attacked, he attacked the grandpa, he stabbed him."
The prosecutor said the suspect had been living in the Annecy area since last fall and had no fixed address. An ice cream seller who works in the waterside park said he had seen the attacker there several days earlier, looking out at the lake ringed by mountains.
