Liege shooter killed fourth person day before attack, says Belgian interior minister

Benjamin Herman bludgeoned to death former prison cellmate night before deadly spree

A gunman who shot dead three people in the Belgian city of Liege on Tuesday had killed a fourth victim hours earlier, the country’s interior minister has said.

Jan Jambon told broadcaster RTL that Benjamin Herman “committed a murder the night before” he stabbed two police officers from behind, took their firearms, and shot them and a bystander.

The attacker then ran into a nearby school and took a woman hostage before he was killed during a rescue operation mounted by special forces.

Mr Jambon said the hostage, believed to be a cleaner, may have prevented more deaths by talking the gunman around.

“She was very courageous and perhaps, but this we will have to verify, she helped avoid more victims in the school,” said Mr Jambon, who visited the woman in hospital, where she was being treated for shock.

Herman, a prisoner on 48-hour leave, bludgeoned to death a former cellmate with a blunt object at his home on Monday evening before “hunting” police officers the next morning, the minister said.

Belgian authorities have launched a terror investigation and are also probing why Herman was allowed temporary leave from prison.

The 36-year-old had a lengthy criminal record including theft, assault and drug charge convictions, and had been flagged in three reports on radicalism.

Belgium did not raise its terror threat level following the attacks, described by Mr Jambon as an “isolated case”.

“He wasn’t part of a network, he did not receive instructions from anyone else, so there is no need to raise the terror threat alert level,” the minister said, adding investigators had no precise information that any other attacks were likely.

Police at the scene of the shootings in Liege (EPA)

Tuesday’s killings took place outside a cafe on Boulevard d’Avroy, a major commercial artery in Belgium’s third largest city.

Herman stabbed two female police officers on routine traffic duties before taking their guns, shooting them dead, and turning a firearm on a 22-year-old man who was sat in a parked car nearby.

Four other police officers were also injured in the attack, one seriously, during an exchange of gunfire with Herman as they launched a rescue operation at the school

“He came out firing at police, wounding a number of them, notably in the legs. He was shot dead,” said Liege prosecutor's spokesman Philippe Dulieu.

Police chief Christian Beaupere said “the goal of the attacker was to target the police.” He identified the murdered officers as Lucile Garcia, 45, and Soraya Belkacemi, 53. He said Belkacemi was the mother of 13-year-old twin daughters whose father, also police officer, had previously died.

Amid questions about how the two officers could have been disarmed by Herman, Mr Jambon praised police as having done an “extraordinary job”.

“They reacted well. All the systems, all the procedures worked. But if you are attacked from behind, as was the case with the two officers, you can’t do anything,” he said.

Justice minister Koen Geens said Herman was a repeat offender who had been in prison since 2003 and was due for permanent release in two years.

Asked about reports that the attacker was radicalised in prison, he said it “was not a clear-cut case.”

“He certainly was not someone who could clearly be qualified as radicalised,” the minister added. ”Otherwise he would have been known as such by all services.”

Belgium’s deputy prime minister Alexander de Croo questioned why Herman had been granted temporary release from jail.

He said: “Everyone in Belgium is asking the same question: how is it possible that someone convicted for such serious acts was allowed to leave prisons?”