Belgium shooter killed ex-inmate night before terror attack
The prison inmate on furlough who murdered two police officers and a bystander in Belgium killed a fourth person a day earlier — by bashing his brains in with a hammer, according to a report Wednesday.
“He also committed a murder the night before [the attack],” Interior Minister Jan Jambon told local broadcaster RTL about the killer, Benjamin Herman.
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Herman, 36, had been let out of prison Monday night near Liège on temporary two-day release and used the opportunity to hunt down Michael Wilmet, a former inmate he’d done time with, and beat him to death with a hammer, according to RTL
“When I walked by his door, he was on his couch, his face unrecognizable, full of blood,” Sabrina Chasseur, a neighbor of Wilmet’s, told the outlet.
Wilmet, a heroin addict who had been in the slammer for drug trafficking, completed his sentence in March.
The day after Wilmet’s murder, Herman stabbed two policewomen — Soraya Belkacemi, 53, and Lucile Garcia, 45 — in the back, then stole one of their weapons to shoot them dead. He then gunned down Cyril Vangriecken, 22, who was in a parked car with his mother, and fled to a nearby school, where he took a woman hostage.
Witnesses and police sources told local media Herman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” — “God is great” in Arabic — while firing his weapon.
He was gunned down by police officers.
While prosecutors called the attack a terrorist act, Jambon suspected that Herman had acted alone.
“It’s really an isolated case. He wasn’t part of a network, he didn’t receive instructions from anyone else, so there is no need to raise the terror threat alert level,” he said.
As questions mounted about why Herman was freed from prison, Justice Minister Koen Geens told RTBF radio he felt “responsible” for Tuesday’s bloodshed.
“The question of whether this man should have been given leave is striking because he killed three completely innocent people with a wish to kill himself,” Geens said.
“I have to examine my own conscience.”
With Post wires