Sexton had throat slit while preparing for Mass

nice — As he did every day, the sexton of the Notre Dame church in the French city of Nice opened up the doors around 08.30am. There were few people around; the first Mass of the day was not due to start for another two hours.

But by around 09.00am, a man armed with a knife entered the church and slit the throat of the sexton, partially beheaded an elderly woman, and badly wounded a third woman, according to a police source.

The sexton and the elderly woman died on the spot, the third woman managed to make it out of the church into a nearby cafe, but she died from her wounds, Nice mayor Christian Estrosi told reporters at the scene. None of the victims has so far been named.

What happened in the initial moments of the attack inside the church, a neo-Gothic building in a tree-lined square in the centre of Nice, remains unclear. But testimony from witnesses, mobile phone footage, and accounts from officials, offer an initial if incomplete picture of how the attack ended.

At some point during the attack inside the church, someone ran to a bakery next to the church, and asked staff to call the police. “I thought it was a joke, I didn’t believe it,” said one of the staff in the bakery.

But when the person insisted the police should be called, David said he walked the short distance to the corner of Rue d’Italie and Avenue Jean Medecin, where last year local authorities installed an intercom in front of the church that connects directly to the municipal police.

David said he pressed the button on the intercom, and summoned the police. The mayor, Estrosi, who had attended last year’s unveiling of the intercom, said this was how police were first alerted to the attack.

David said the police arrived on the scene within 30 seconds, while he went back inside his bakery and pulled down the blinds. The police arrived at 09.10am, according to a police spokesman, 10 minutes after the attack began. At some point during the attack, the knifeman came out of the church, according to Didier-Olivier Reverdy of police officer’s union Alliance Police Nationale.

“When the attacker came out, there was a kind of panic around the concourse” surrounding the church, said Reverdy. ‘ There was blood visible.’ —