Blood tests have determined that a suspected Islamic extremist consumed drugs and alcohol before a frenzied spree of violence that ended when he took a soldier hostage at Paris' Orly Airport and was shot dead by her fellow patrolmen.
The Paris prosecutors' office said toxicology tests conducted as part of an autopsy found traces of cocaine and cannabis in the blood of the suspect, Ziyed Ben Belgacem.
He also had 0.93 grams of alcohol per litre of blood when he died on Saturday, nearly twice the legal limit for driving in France.
The 39-year-old Frenchman with a long criminal record of drugs and robbery offences stopped at a bar early Saturday morning, around four hours before he first fired bird shot at traffic police. Then, 90 minutes later, he attacked the military patrol at Orly, causing panic and the shutdown of the French capital's second-biggest airport.
Yelling that he wanted to kill and die for Allah, Belgacem wrestled away a soldier's assault rifle but was shot dead by two other soldiers before he could fire the military-grade weapon in Orly's busy South Terminal, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said.
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In an interview on Sunday with French radio Europe 1, a man identified as the suspect's father said Belgacem wasn't a practicing Muslim and drank alcohol.
"My son was never a terrorist. He never attended prayer. He drank. But under the effects of alcohol and cannabis, this is where one ends up," said the father.
Belgacem had been flagged as having been radicalised during a spell in detention in 2011-2012, Molins said. His house was among dozens searched in November 2015 in the immediate aftermath of suicide bomb-and-gun attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.
