PARIS -- The Champs-Elysees gunman who shot and killed a Paris police officer just days before France's presidential election had a note with him defending the Islamic State extremist group, France's anti-terrorism prosecutor said Friday.
Police investigating Thursday's attack found a note praising the Islamic State that apparently fell from the pocket of French assailant Karim Cheurfi, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said. Cheurfi also had addresses of police stations written on bits of paper in his car, Molins said.
The extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack in an unusually quick statement. Cheurfi, 39, was shot and killed by officers at the scene.
Molins said Cheurfi had a criminal record that included threatening police and he was arrested in February. But, the prosecutor said, there was "a lack of known elements of radicalization" in the suspect's past and he was released for lack of evidence of a threat.
Two officials said Cheurfi was convicted in 2003 of attempted homicide in the shootings of two police officers.
The attack Thursday on the Champs-Elysees, a grand boulevard synonymous with French glamour that traverses shops and landmarks, occurred less than 72 hours before polls open in the first-round vote of the presidential election.
The French government pulled out all the stops to protect Sunday's vote.
"Nothing must hamper this democratic moment, essential for our country," Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after a high-level meeting Friday that reviewed the government's already heightened security plans for the two-round presidential vote that begins Sunday.
"Barbarity and cowardice struck Paris last night," the prime minister declared, appealing for national unity and for people "not to succumb to fear."
Investigators believe at this stage that the gunman was alone in killing the police officer and wounding two others and a female German tourist on Thursday night, said a French official, who discussed details of the investigation with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The policeman killed Thursday was identified as Xavier Jugele by Flag!, a French association of gay, bisexual and transgender police officers. Its president, Mickael Bucheron, said the slain officer would have celebrated his 38th birthday at the beginning of May.
Jugele was among the officers who responded to the attack on Paris' Bataclan concert hall Nov. 13, 2015, among a wave of gun-and-bomb attacks in the French capital that killed 130 people, he told People.com.
He was also there a year later when the venue reopened with a concert by Sting, saying how happy he was to be "here to defend our civic values."
"This concert's to celebrate life, to say 'no' to terrorists," the media outlet quoted Jugele as saying.
The two police officers injured in the attack are out of danger, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.
National police spokesman Jerome Bonet, also speaking on BFM television, said thousands of people were on the popular Paris boulevard when the gunman opened fire and that the rapid response of officers who shot and killed him avoided possible "carnage."
Police shot and killed Cheurfi after he opened fire on a police van. Investigators found a pump-action shotgun and knives in his car. Cheurfi's identity was confirmed from his fingerprints.
Municipal workers in white hygiene suits were out before dawn to wash down the sidewalk where the attack took place -- a scene now familiar after multiple attacks that have killed more than 230 people in France over two years.
A key question was how the attack might affect French voters, since a ban on campaigning started Friday at midnight
The two top finishers Sunday advance to a winner-takes-all presidential runoff on May 7. Two of the main candidates, conservative Francois Fillon and centrist Emmanuel Macron, canceled campaign events Friday.
Elena Worms, who was walking her dog near the Champs-Elysees, called the attack "destabilizing" and said she fears it will "push people to the extremes." She said her plans to vote for Fillon, a former prime minister, remain unchanged.
Investigators searched a home early Friday in an eastern suburb of Paris believed linked to the attack and detained three of the gunman's family members for questioning.
The attack recalled two recent attacks on French soldiers providing security at prominent locations around Paris: one at the Louvre museum in February and one at Orly airport last month.
For Sunday's presidential vote, the government is mobilizing more than 50,000 police and gendarmes to protect the 70,000 polling stations, with an additional 7,000 soldiers also on patrol.
Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Adamson, Sylvie Corbet, Angela Charlton, Raphael Satter, Jeff Schaeffer, Nadine Achoui-Lesage and Raf Casert of The Associated Press.
A Section on 04/22/2017