A French police officer was hailed as a hero Friday after he persuaded an armed man who had stormed a supermarket and fatally shot at least two people there to let him take the place of one the gunman’s hostages.

The gendarme, whom media named as Lt-Col Arnaud Beltrame, helped bring an end to a gunman’s shooting spree that killed three in Southern France.

The gunman – Redouane Lakdim, 25, said he had been fighting on behalf of the Islamic State group.

He was born in Morocco and lived in Carcassonne, and was known to police for petty crimes and drug-dealing.

State Prosecutor François Molins said he had been under surveillance in 2016 and 2017 for his “radicalism and proximity to Salafist movements” but had showed no signs he was going to carry out an attack.

During the incident, Lakdim was shot dead by French police.

Lakdim is said to have been demanding the release of Salah Abdeslam, the most important surviving suspect in the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people.

ABC News reports that three people were killed while sixteen remain to be injured.

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