Teacher decapitated in shocking attack on French street

French police officers stand guard a street in Eragny on October 16, 2020, where an attacker was shot dead by policemen after he decapitated a man earlier on the same day. (Photo by ABDULMONAM EASSA/AFP via Getty Images)

A history teacher who opened a discussion with students on caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was decapitated in a French street on Friday and police have shot the suspected killer dead, a police official said.

The French anti-terrorism prosecutor has opened an investigation into the slaying for murder with a suspected terrorist motive, the prosecutor's office said. The gruesome incident occurred in the town of Eragny, in the Val d’Oise region northwest of Paris.

A police official said the suspect, armed with a knife and an airsoft gun was shot to death by police about 600 meters (yards) from where the male teacher was killed. The teacher had been threatened after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures, the police official told The Associated Press.

Get breaking news alerts in the FOX5NY News app. Download for FREE!

The official could not be named, not being authorized to discuss ongoing investigations.

It was the second terrorism-related incident since the opening of an ongoing trial on the newsroom massacre in Jan. 2015 at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The paper recently republished caricatures of the prophet. A young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing, outside the newspaper’s former offices, two people who suffered non life-threatening injuries.