Man who stabbed a French soldier patrolling Paris ahead of Olympics is taken to psychiatric hospital

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PARIS (AP) — The man who stabbed and wounded a French soldier patrolling Paris just days before the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics has been taken to a psychiatric hospital, French prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The stabbing occurred Monday outside the Gare de l’Est train station in eastern Paris. The city has been under a high security alert before the start of the Summer Games on July 26. The soldier was hospitalized with a shoulder blade injury, but was not in life-threatening condition, officials said after the attack.

A statement from the Paris Public Prosecutor's office Tuesday identified the attacker as 40-year-old Christian Ingondo, who was born in Congo. Ingondo was released from custody Tuesday morning and transferred to a psychiatric hospital that is under police supervision, the statement said.

Investigations into attempted murder and the suspect's background are ongoing, the statement said.

In 2018, Ingondo was under judicial investigation on murder charges, the prosecutor's statement said. Two years later, in 2020, the investigating judges dropped charges against him and ordered a mandatory hospitalization.

Thousands of troops serve in the Sentinelle force for France’s domestic security, created to guard prominent French sites after a string of deadly Islamic State extremist attacks in 2015. Soldiers in the Sentinelle force have been targeted in the past.

Paris is deploying around 30,000 police officers each day for the Olympics, which run from July 26 to Aug. 11, with a peak of 45,000 for the opening ceremony on the Seine river. About 18,000 members of the military are also helping ensure security, with thousands of them staying in a huge camp erected on the edge of Paris.