This time yesterday, as the people of Nice prepared for the Bastille Day celebrations on a warm Thursday evening, nobody had ever heard the name Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel.
Now, that name will be forever synonymous with the horrendous Nice attacks, as Bouhlel was the man behind the wheel of the lorry which drove at high speed into celebratory crowds of mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, killing at least 84, and severely injuring over 100 others on Promenade Des Anglais.
And for what?
In the hours which followed the horror that scarred our hearts and television screens late yesterday evening, French Police stormed the home of Bouhlel, blowing his front door from its hinges using specialist explosives, reports The Mirror.
Inside, they found a laptop – facing them. This laptop will likely be filled with many of Bouhlel’s secrets and, in the near future, will shed some light on his reasoning behind the shocking attack on July 14.
Beneath the laptop were a collection of a papers.
Both the laptop and papers have since been handed to experts who will conduct an in depth investigation into both objects, and will aim to find out if and how Bouhlel was radicalised, as well as establish what pushed him to commit such a sickening atrocity.
Experts should also be able to go back through Bouhlel’s Internet history and data.
Police also found a stash of numerous drugs inside Bouhlel’s home – although so far it is not known whether the drugs were prescribed or recreational.
On the frame of his front door, black blast marks can be seen where police officers decimated the door’s hinges to gain safer access into his lair.
Bouhlel was well known to police for petty crimes such as theft and violence and he had appeared in court as recently as March.
But this still doesn’t explain why the 31-year-old French-Tunisian delivery driver would go on to commit an act as barbaric as the one we all bore witness to yesterday.
Thousands of people were reportedly stood on the Promenade Des Anglais to watch the firework display last night – thousands, whose lives will never be quite the same again.
Bouhlel drove the lorry at speed into the crowd of people and continued driving into innocent person after innocent person for about a mile, before the lorry came to a halt and was riddled by bullets from French Police.
Our thoughts go out to all those directly or indirectly involved in last night’s attack.
It was not an attack on ideology, or government, or religion, but an attack on democracy and innocent civilians merely celebrating their country’s history.
