What We Know About the Attacker in Nice

The white truck appeared on the coastal boulevard not long after Thursday night’s Bastille Day fireworks had let out their final burst over the French Riviera. At first, many of the bystanders thought it was a horrible mistake, and so they waved their hands and yelled at the man behind the wheel. The driver had run down several people, including a middle-aged Muslim woman, and the shouting witnesses wondered whether he was somehow oblivious to the growing trail of broken bodies behind him. He was not. He pressed the gas pedal and careered farther down the Promenade des Anglais, zigzagging into crowds at high speeds and sporadically firing a pistol. Some distant revellers mistook the gunshots for the sounds of extra fireworks, until they heard the screams. A daring motorcyclist caught up with the truck and tried to break into the cabin, but he slipped off and fell beneath the wheels. The truck weighed nineteen tons. The rampage ended only when police fired dozens of rounds through the windshield, killing the driver. Eighty-four people lay dead in his wake.