Investigators worked around a burned-out car, the one that hit pedestrians and cyclists, in Saint-Pierre-d'Oléron, off France's western coast, on November 5, 2025. YOHAN BONNET/AP
It is one of the most popular tourist roads on the island of Oléron, off France's western coast. If it had happened a week earlier, during school holidays, the car-ramming attack by a local driver unknown to intelligence services could have resulted in even more victims. For reasons still unknown, the perpetrator got into his car on the morning of Wednesday, November 5, leaving the port of La Cotinière around 8:40 am and taking the coastal road toward the area known as La Remigeasse, a spot thronged with visitors in the summer. He then headed toward the center of Dolus-d'Oléron before returning to Saint-Pierre-d'Oléron, the island's main town, where he abandoned his car and set it on fire.
Along the way, the driver deliberately hit five pedestrians and cyclists in 35 minutes, seriously injuring two people, including a woman in her 20s who works for local MP Pascal Markowsky of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). She had been out jogging and was taken to the hospital in the nearby city of Poitiers. Several other people were left deeply shaken after witnessing the scene.
