The incident took place around 9:30 during morning Mass on Tuesday at a parish church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, a community of 29,000 people near the city of Rouen, about 75 miles northwest of Paris.
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The man is one of the two assailants responsible for the killing of an 86-year old priest, Father Jacques Hamel, in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
A Syrian refugee was arrested by French police on suspicion of being involved in a deadly jihadist attack on Tuesday on a Catholic church, a source close to the probe said Friday. An elderly man among the five people in the congregation was seriously wounded by knife slashes.
But in the time it took security agencies in Turkey, a well-trodden entry point into Syria for foreign militants, to notify France, Petitjean had returned.
Police discovered an ID card belonging to Petitjean in Kermiche’s house but required DNA tests to verify his identity, since his body had been disfigured in the police shooting.
The two jihadists pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, a video posted on the Islamic State group news agency Amaq showed Wednesday.
“France will always be France, because France will never yield and because France is always the bearer of ideals, values and principles, for which we are recognised throughout the world”, Hollande said in a speech in the southwest town of Rivesaltes.
Kermiche was then electronically tagged in France and was awaiting trial on terrorism charges when he reportedly deactivated his monitoring device and snuck off to carry out the attack.
The UCLAT flyer to law enforcement said the person in the photo “could already be present in France and act alone or with other individuals”. France duly placed Petitjean’s name on a long list of names of French residents who travel to Syria and Iraq, either to fight with IS forces or simply to live among them.
Pope Francis said the slaying of a priest and a string of attacks in Europe in past weeks were proof the “world was at war”, stressing this was not a war of religion but rather one of domination of peoples and economic interests.
President Francois Hollande has said France will form a National Guard from reserve forces, in an attempt to prevent further attacks.
Others who knew him were equally shocked, describing him as normal and showing no signs of radicalisation.
A Tunisian delivery man ran his truck through a crowd in Nice on Bastille Day, killing 84 people.
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France has been under a state of emergency since the Paris terror attacks in November, and authorities have struggled to monitor thousands of domestic Islamic radicals on their radar.
