Four people were killed: an Iraqi-born British tourist named Saad al-Hilli, 50; his wife Iqbal, 47; her mother Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, who held a Swedish passport; and French cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45.

One, aged 4, was hidden under the legs of her dead mother in the rear footwell for eight hours even while the Gendarmerie were on the scene; she was only discovered by specialist forensic investigators.

Police investigated al-Hilli's past in Iraq as an engineer on sensitive topics, as well as his work at the time of his death, as a potential motive for the attack.

[6] Eventually, ballistic analyses of the cartridge cases and butt plate fragments showed that the weapon used by the killer was a Luger P06 semi-automatic pistol (model 1906) firing the 7.65×21mm Parabellum ammunition with an eight-round magazine.

Prior to the incident, the BMW was reversed sharply into the side of the lay-by, leaving marks which were still visible when the site was reopened to the public.

[20] A police source stated that Mollier, a local father of three who worked as a welder in a workshop at a subsidiary of Areva, "doesn't appear to have been exposed to nuclear secrets".

[8] In October 2012, confidential police files on the case were leaked to a French newspaper, showing investigators believed the killings were carried out by "a lone and psychologically disturbed killer".

[26] Since his suicide in June 2014, Patrice Menegaldo, an ex-French Foreign Legion soldier from Ugine, has been positioned very high on the list of suspects.

One relates to the disappearance and death of an eight-year-old girl, Maëlys de Araujo, in August 2017 at a wedding where the suspect was a guest; the other to the killing of a hitchhiking soldier in April of the same year.

Lelandais has been in custody since September 2017, as part of the investigation of the disappearance and death of the de Araujo child in the Chambéry region of south-eastern France.

[29] Investigators probing the de Araujo case found that Lelandais' cell phone had been in the same area at the same time as Arthur Noyer.

Chambéry prosecutor Thierry Dran told a news conference that Lelandais' black Audi A3 car was identified in the area on surveillance cameras, and an analysis of his phone found he had looked up "decomposition of a human body" on the internet.

When asked about the Annecy shootings, Dran told Le Parisien: "Given this new development, we will be verifying (any connections), and that will naturally be done, to rule out or include (the suspect in the investigation).

"[34] He also said, "I have spoken to the British ambassador in France and consular staff are working very hard so that we do everything we can ... and to find out what happened in this very tragic case.

"[35] French President François Hollande said "I expressed my emotion earlier today to the British people in relation to the terrible deaths.