French Teen Kills 12 People, Then Himself

After murdering three relatives at home, a teen-ager walked to the next village Sunday and calmly opened fire on a quiet town square, killing nine more people before turning the gun on himself.

The murder-suicide in southern France was the country’s worst multiple killing since 1989.

“It was like he was hunting birds,” said Guy Sintes, the owner of a cafe on the square in Cuers, a village of about 7,000 people near the Mediterranean port of Toulon.

Eight other people were wounded in the half-hour morning shooting rampage, three of them seriously, police said. The victims’ ages ranged from 17 to 75.

Police identified the youth as 16-year-old Eric Borel. The motive for the killings was unclear. His father died recently of cancer.

Neighbors of his family, interviewed on French television, described the youth as taciturn and said his room was plastered with posters of Hitler and neo-Nazi themes.

The killings began in the village of Sollies-Pont, about six miles north of Toulon. There, the teen-ager used a hammer and a baseball bat to kill his mother, stepfather and half-brother.

The youth then walked to Cuers, about three miles north of his home, where he began shooting a .22-caliber rifle at random in a parking lot, outside a bank and in the town square.

He killed seven people and wounded nine others before he shot himself, police said. Two of the injured later died.