Awakened at 5 a.m., he found an apartment rigged with gas canisters, over a hundred rounds of ammunition, passersby riddled with bullets, a wounded man finished off with a close-range gunshot, and a young girl wearing a headscarf struck by eight bullets. The statements made by 39-year-old Kevin Tessier during his police custody reveal the full horror of the racist terrorist attack committed on October 23 in Trappes and La Verrière, in the Yvelines department . This Wednesday, the content of his interrogations sheds light on the preparation of his attack, the sequence of events during the shootings, and his motives. The attack left one dead and seven wounded.
Awakening at 5 a.m., he prepares his weapons and sets his apartment ablaze.
On Friday, October 23, Kevin Tessier woke up at 5:00 a.m. in his apartment in Plaisir, in the Yvelines department. He was supposed to report to the Levallois-Perret police station at 9:30 a.m. for a voluntary interview concerning violence committed three days earlier against a Black motorist. But he had already decided not to attend.
"I was supposed to have an appointment in Levallois at 9:30 for a voluntary interview regarding armed violence. I wasn't planning on going ," he explained to investigators.
He consumes a large quantity of coffee and cocaine, then prepares his weapon. He loads his magazines with more than a hundred cartridges for his Sten submachine gun, a 9mm caliber weapon dating from the Second World War, capable of firing in bursts.
"I drank a lot of coffee, I took some cocaine ," he says. He then summarizes his preparations: "I prepared myself for what I had to do."
Before leaving his home, he also attempted to cause an explosion in his building. He opened three gas canisters and left behind a makeshift device designed to ignite them. The system included timers, but the explosion did not occur.
"After 20 minutes, nothing had happened. So I understood that it had failed for the apartment ," he says.
The device could have destroyed his apartment and damaged neighboring units. The RAID special forces and bomb disposal experts will have to intervene to secure the area and reduce the gas concentration.
He wanted to begin his massacre in front of the Trappes mosque.
Around 9 a.m., Kevin Tessier left his home in his Renault Clio. His objective, according to his own statements, was to kill. He headed towards Trappes, a town he claims to have chosen because of its large Muslim population.
He first goes to the mosque, where he plans to begin his attack. But he finds no one there.
"There was nobody there, so I left," he explains, before specifying that he started driving around the streets of the town.
He attempted to shoot people at a bus stop, but his weapon jammed. He continued driving and opened fire on a car directly from his own vehicle.
"I machine-gunned her directly through my windshield ," he claims.
He then described the first victims targeted in the streets of Trappes: "I shot a black man who was walking alone in the street. I shot at a car while I was driving."
At the gas station, he shoots a man who is already wounded at close range.
Kevin Tessier continued his attacks near a gas station. He fired at several people, including at the shop. He claims to have also targeted men he believed to be of North African descent.
A man riding a scooter, Ahmed Chihi, was hit. Seriously wounded, he lay bleeding on the ground. Kevin Tessier then recounts a particularly violent episode of his attack: despite his weapon jamming again, he managed to fire once more at the man at close range.
"I picked up a piece of ammunition that had fallen on the ground, unused. I put it directly into the barrel and shot this person at close range ," he said.
Ahmed Chihi will survive his injuries, but will have to undergo major surgical procedures.
The gunman explained that he had also tried to target a veiled woman who was filling up her car with fuel. His weapon jammed again, preventing him from firing.
These repeated malfunctions, however, did not end his attack. Kevin Tessier took the wheel again and continued on his way to La Verrière.
"Go ahead, pray, my dear": a veiled girl hit by eight bullets
After the initial shootings, Kevin Tessier headed towards La Verrière. He stopped in a parking lot to reload his magazines, then set off again in search of new victims.
He recounts encountering two black men near a van, stopping, and opening fire on them. He then continued on his way through a housing estate area.
That's when he spots a young black girl wearing a veil, walking alone in the street. He stops his car, gets out, and runs towards her.
“I stopped in the middle of the road. I ran towards her. I said to her, ‘Go ahead, pray, my beautiful girl.’ I repeated that twice and I shot her,” he told investigators.
The victim, Ramatou D., was an 11-year-old child at the time of the incident. She was shot eight times and collapsed.
"She fell, she was screaming, she was in a lot of pain," continued the suspect, who described the scene without showing any real emotion.
When the police revealed his victim's age, Kevin Tessier claims he was disturbed. He maintains he thought he was dealing with an older teenager.
"I thought she was at least sixteen, seventeen years old ," he says, before stating that he would not have shot if he had known she was that young.
The girl, seriously injured, survived the attack. Her life, initially in danger, was no longer in danger two days after the incident.
At least 128 gunshots and eight crime scenes
Kevin Tessier's murderous rampage spanned approximately 12 kilometers, between Trappes and La Verrière. Investigators identified eight crime scenes and counted at least 128 rounds fired, a figure likely to be an underestimate due to the dispersal of some casings.
The attack claimed the life of 26-year-old Pengo Bossio Wangi. Seven other people were injured, four of them seriously. Several other people directly targeted physically escaped the gunfire.
Kevin Tessier was finally apprehended around 10:20 a.m. in Coignières by police officers from the anti-crime squad of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. He did not resist arrest.
In his car, police discovered, among other things, his Sten submachine gun, magazines, ammunition, a laser pointer, a knife, a tear gas canister, handcuffs and a police armband.
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