Lyon (AFP)

French investigators were trying Sunday to identify the personality and motives of the man with "a psychotic state" who killed the day before a young man and injured 8 people near Lyon, randomly striking passersby with knives.

"It would be a man of Afghan nationality, known under two different identities" giving "three different dates of birth", first came in 2009 in France where he is again since 2016, said Sunday, when of a press conference, the public prosecutor of the Republic of Lyon, Nicolas Jacquet.

In the meantime, he had been "located" in Italy, Germany and Norway.

The alleged Afghan, with a temporary residence permit, spread terror in Villeurbanne, a town bordering Lyon, killing one, a 19-year-old, and eight wounded.

The vital prognosis of the two most seriously affected people was no longer committed on Sunday. The other six were able to return home.

Mr. Jacquet confirmed that the terrorist hypothesis seemed to be rejected: "Because of the personality of the implicated and in the absence of elements allowing to link directly his passage to the act with a terrorist enterprise", the national parquet floor counterterrorism is not seized "at this stage".

Very quickly questioned, thanks to witnesses whose prosecutor hailed "the brave action", the man who had consumed a large amount of cannabis, said "not to have precise memory" of the facts but recognized them "partially ".

He also claimed "to have heard voices insulting God, ordering him to kill", also speaking of revenge and a man he would have recognized, which would have wronged him in England, told the prosecutor "incoherent and confused".

With no known psychiatric history, he was seen on Sunday and psychiatrists diagnosed "an invading psychotic state with paranoid delusions" related to topics such as religion.

Armed with a knife and a barbecue fork, he blindly attacked passers-by on a busy esplanade at the exit of a metro where several bloodstains were partially cleaned and a yellow ribbon of police abandoned on the ground testified Sunday of the drama of the day before. Flowers, deposited by neighbors, were visible here and there.

He was cornered by several witnesses, who told him to release his weapons. In a video broadcast on social networks and by many TV channels, we see a man with matte skin, short black beard, well cut, sweet black hood and red sneakers with a blade and a small fork in a hand talking with men, before throwing his weapons and squatting.

- Vivid political reactions -

Local elected officials have been calling for caution since then in the face of unknown motives.

But on the right as on the far right of the political spectrum, the nationality of the alleged perpetrator did not fail to react.

"The naivety and laxity of our migration policy seriously threatens the safety of the French!", Said the President of the National Rally (far right) Marine Le Pen on Twitter.

"There is enough to be lenient with" crazy "+ who still look a lot like terrorists.That France asks the Afghan justice to settle itself the case of his national!", Estimated for his part Julien Aubert, candidate for the presidency of the party Republicans (right).

"The political comments I have heard from a number of opposition leaders are sickening to me," responded Gilles Le Gendre, leader of the deputies of the presidential majority. "Why should an asylum seeker have a special predisposition to commit crimes?" He asked.

© 2019 AFP