On Thursday, June 8, a children’s playground in the picturesque French Alpine town of Annecy was the scene of a ghastly stabbing attack in which four toddlers and two pensioners were seriously wounded by a knife- wielding assailant. A bystander’s video later hit the internet, showing the attacker repeatedly lunging at a child in a stroller, pushing aside a woman who tried to shield the child. “He clearly targeted the babies,” another witness told BFM TV.
But video also showed the attacker being confronted by an unarmed young backpacker who fended him off with one of his two backpacks and then pursued the suspect into the playground and threw one of his bags at him. Subsequently dubbed “le héros au sac a dos,” or “the backpack hero,” by the media, the 24-year-old Catholic who gave only his first name, Henri, said he was on a months-long pilgrimage of France’s cathedrals and happened to be near the playground when he saw the attack begin.