The question on everyone’s minds will be whether there is some kind of religious connection with this. We just don’t know
Eleanor Vincent witnessed the scene just moments after the attack.
She tells BBC News of a “somewhat chaotic” situation as officers rushed to the scene with machine guns and wearing riot gear.
“It was very intense,” she says.
Vincent says she wasn’t able to see the moment of arrest because the area had already been cordoned off. “Police were very fast on the scene,” she says.
Speaking of the incident more generally, she says: “It was a moment of shock, it was a moment of horror. People here are on vacation.”
Colleagues over on the BBC’s visual journalism team have made the below map, outlining where Annecy is in south-eastern France and where the attack took place.
The town, which is less than an hour from Geneva in Switzerland, is nicknamed the Pearl of the French Alps.
There’s nothing on the suspect’s record that the police have to suggest a history of violence or of affiliation with Islamist groups.
But of course, the question on everyone’s minds will be whether there is some kind of religious connection with this. We just don’t know.
At the moment, the terrorism office of the prosecutors’ department has not been called on to investigate – which suggests that at this point in time, they’re not thinking that this was an act that was inspired by Islamist terrorism.
But I’m sure that this is being kept open for the time being, and that we’ll hear more later.