“I rule out a terrorist motive.”
All right. We know that the Islamic State has called for vehicular jihad attacks, and that there have been many such attacks in the West in the last few years, but any psychopath can also deliberately drive a car into a pizzeria, and so the police denial that this was a terror attack may be entirely true.
The only problem is that police so often deny that jihad terror attacks really are jihad terror attacks, that the possibility cannot be ruled out in this case without further details about the perpetrator.
“Girl killed after driver deliberately plows into French pizzeria, police say,” CBS, August 14, 2017:
SEPT-SORTS, France — An 8-year-old girl was killed and at least 13 people were injured when a driver slammed his car into the sidewalk cafe of a pizza restaurant in a small town east of Paris, authorities said Monday.
The driver was immediately arrested in what was the latest of several attacks in France and elsewhere using a vehicle as a weapon. The local prosecutor said the man’s actions in the dinnertime attack in the town of Sept-Sorts were clearly deliberate, but not terrorism-related.
The girl and her brother were among restaurant patrons eating on the outdoor terrace of Pizzeria Cesena when a man in a BMW accelerated toward them, an official with the national gendarme service told The Associated Press. Some officials said the girl was 13, while the prosecutor said she was 12.
The girl died immediately, and her brother’s injuries were considered life-threatening, according to a gendarme official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.
Deputy regional prosecutor Eric de Valroger said a 3-year-old boy was flown by helicopter to France’s premier children’s hospital in Paris and 12 other people were also hospitalized, four in serious condition.
Speaking to reporters near the attack site, de Valroger said he had opened a homicide investigation. At this stage, he said, “I rule out a terrorist motive.”
He called it “highly probable” that the driver was under the influence of drugs and that he left the road and deliberately aimed his car at restaurant-goers. De Valroger identified the attacker as a 31-year-old from the nearby town of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre.
The suspect is believed to have tried to kill himself last week, French Interior Ministry Pierre-Henry Brandet said on BFM television. Brandet said the man was not known to intelligence or police.
Explosives experts combed the area and found no weapon other than the car itself, according to the prosecutor….
The incident on a quiet August night on the eve of a national holiday reignited fears after multiple attacks in which a vehicle was the weapon of choice. An Algerian man drove his car into a group of French soldiers last week, leaving six wounded. A truck attack in the French city of Nice left 86 people dead a little more than a year ago….