Neighbour: gunman Coulibaly ‘linked to jogger shooting’

Behind the train station in the suburb of Fontenay aux Rose is a beautiful park that is popular with families, surrounded by detached houses. But along one of the footpaths, police tape is tied around a tree. This is the scene of an investigation that has linked another shooting to Amedy Coulibaly.

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The park is a five minute walk from the flat he lived in with his partner Hayat Boumeddiene. Channel 4 News has learnt that detectives believe he came here to practice using his gun before killing a policewoman and then laying siege to a kosher supermarket.

On Wednesday morning, Paris was in chaos. Coulibaly’s associates Cherif and Said Kouachi had carried out a murderous attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. They had gone on the run and thousands of police officers were hunting them across the city.

During the confusion, investigators believe Amedy Coulibaly went out to the park. A man was out jogging, when suddenly he was fired upon. He was critically injured but managed to get one of the houses for help.

We spoke to the neighbour, who didn’t want to be identified but who told us how distressing it was. She said the jogger was clearly badly injured and pleaded for help.

The police were called, but the gunman had run away. Channel 4 News has been told that ballistics tests on shell cases from the park link them to the automatic weapon used at the kosher store.

The park happens to have an archery range and neighbours fear Coulibaly came here to practice using his weapons. I spoke to several people who had known the couple. They told me Coulibaly had moved in with his partner after getting out of prison for a previous conviction.

Questions have already been asked about whether Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers should have been on a watch list, given their known links with terrorism. And now people here are also asking why it took so long to link the unusual shooting of the jogger, who was left in a critical condition.

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“It’s frightening. We all knew about the jogger getting shot here, but we had no idea our neighbour had done it. And then we learnt he had killed a policewoman and taken hostages at the supermarket,” one neighbour told me. She said Boumeddiene had lived there for around six years and they always got on well. But Boumeddiene had become increasingly radical as she came under the influence of her partner.

We had no idea our neighbour had done it.

The couple’s front door is now sealed with police tape, a notice explaining it had been searched during an investigation into “murder and terrorism.” The police had originally put out wanted posters of Boumeddiene naming her as a suspect, but it’s now understood she left France for Syria before the attacks.

In the new video of Coulibaly, he pledges his allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

In the park beside their house, a family out enjoying the sunshine tell me they are just glad it’s all over.