The police officers who confronted truck driver Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel in Nice pumped around 20 bullets into his truck in the shootout that ended his bloody Bastille Day rampage, according to an affidavit seen by AFP.
Three officers responding to the scene came upon the smashed truck that the 31-year-old Tunisian has used to plow through barriers and then pick off people in his path.
“He was at a halt, the front of the vehicle had been completely torn off, the engine was visible,” the officer says in the affidavit.
In nightmarish scenes, bodies lay crumpled behind the vehicle while others lay crushed beneath its wheels.
Police officers and rescue workers stand near a van that plowed into a crowd leaving a fireworks display in the French Riviera town of Nice on July 14, 2016. (Valery Hache/AFP)
The police say they stopped an onlooker from climbing into the truck to try to overpower the driver but then saw Lahouaiej-Bouhlel raise his arm inside the truck “with a handgun in his right hand” and start to shoot.
A shootout ensued until the officer saw the driver’s head “slump back onto the window, on the passenger side.”
— AFP
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