Grisly slay in France stirs fears of past terror attack

A French teacher was decapitated in a Paris suburb Friday, a grisly slaying with echoes of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre.

The suspected killer was caught in a nearby town and was shot dead after refusing to drop a knife, authorities said. The man’s motive is under investigation, but police told French news agency AFP that the history teacher had recently shown cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad during a discussion about freedom of speech in his class, a move that prompted threats against him.

In 2015, two gunmen stormed the headquarters of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people and wounding 11 more. The shooters, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, were said to be angered by the publication’s portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

The identity of Friday’s victim has not been released.

The accused killer is believed to be a young man of Chechen origin, Le Parisien reported. He also posted a video of the victim’s severed head and was carrying a knife and a gun when police found him, according to the paper.

Friday’s gruesome slaying happened in a street of Éragny, several miles northwest of the French capital.

It’s the second terrorism-related incident to strike the country in the past three weeks. A young man from Pakistan was arrested on Sept. 25 after stabbing two people near the former offices of Charlie Hebdo.

The suspect in the stabbing claims he tried to kill the two victims in retaliation after the magazine republished the same Muhammad caricatures that triggered the massacre five years ago.

Charlie Hebdo, which is known for mocking religious figures, ran the controversial cartoons last month ahead of an ongoing trial on the mass shooting.