A 28-year old French waiter was fatally shot dead by an angry customer on Friday (16.08.2019) at a fast-food restaurant in Paris. The killing took place at a pizza and sandwich restaurant named Le Mistral in Noisy-Le-Grand, east of Paris, the police said.
The customer, who has not been identified, had been waiting several minutes for a sandwich and became angry because he thought it had not been prepared quickly enough, restaurant employees and other witnesses told AFP.
As reported by the New York Times, the man insulted the 28-year-old waiter before producing a 9-millimeter handgun, shooting and seriously wounding him in the shoulder. Colleagues who witnessed the shooting called the police. Paramedics arrived quickly but were unable to revive the waiter. He (the said waiter) later died on the scene, after failed attempts by the paramedics to resuscitate him.
The fierce gunman, who a witness said lost his temper “as his sandwich wasn’t prepared quickly enough”, immediately fled the scene. Police on the scene of the crime told AFP that a hunt for the customer had kicked off.
On Saturday, and with the allegedly ‘mentally ill’ shooter still in the wind, shocked residents gathered outside the pizza and sandwich eatery. “He was killed for a sandwich?” one customer who frequents the restaurant asked, unbelievingly. “It is sad,” said a 29-year-old woman. “It’s a quiet restaurant, without any problems. It just opened a few months ago.”
A police spokesman, Raphaël Biron from the Paris Police Prefecture, confirmed the incident but declined to provide further details because the investigation was still ongoing.
The Parisian suburbs are brimming with many fast-food restaurant outlets, and most often waiters are compelled to work under pressure to deliver customers’ orders quickly and efficiently. But majority of the killings in such restaurants have been linked to score-settling and feuds, the authorities further added.
According to police data gathered in 2018 alone, French law enforcement authorities recorded over 845 homicides nationwide, which was a steady increase from the previous year, 2017.
