‘He was about to kill me,’ officer who shot dead knife attacker tells court

“I felt he was about to kill me,” the Catalan police officer who shot dead a knife-wielding assailant who attacked her in a police station told the judge overseeing the investigation. The Mossos d’Esquadra officer also told the court she shot the assailant four times because he refused to lower the knife he attacked her with when she opened the front door for him.

Describing the events that took place on Monday in the police station in Cornellà de Llobregat, near Barcelona, the officer said the man lunged at her with the knife while shouting in Arabic. While it is unknown exactly what the man shouted, it included the word “Allah." Police are currently treating the incident as a terrorist act.

Yet, the family of the assailant, who lived just 150 metres away, claimed that he was not an extremist and that he was going through a personal crisis. His ex-wife told police that he was suicidal after discovering he was gay, which led to the couple breaking up. The family is now considering suing the Mossos police for negligent conduct, their lawyer said.

Letter in Arabic

Investigators have found no evidence linking the 29-year-old with jihadi groups. A search of his home revealed a short text in Arabic in which he asks God’s forgiveness, according to local media. The prosecutor’s hypothesis is that he sought refuge in religion out of a sense of guilt over his sexuality and that the attack was meant to be a way of redeeming himself in God’s eyes.

Whether or not he was aiming to provoke the police into killing him, the head of the Mossos d’Esquadra, Andreu Martínez, defended the police officer who shot the suspect, saying her actions were “correct, proportional, appropriate and coherent” given the “extreme seriousness” of the situation in which she found herself.

Two lines of investigation

With two lines of investigation underway -terror attacks come under the jurisdiction of Spain’s National Court, while the actions of the police officers falls to the court in Cornellà- the local Islamic community condemned the attack. “All of this harms the image of Islam and Muslims, but we are people of peace,” said the spokesman for the local Islamic cultural center.