He was nothing special.
The terrorist truck driver who slaughtered 84 people in the French Riviera city of Nice was a boozing deliveryman with a violent criminal past — but had no apparent ties to religious extremism.
Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel was a petty criminal who drank alcohol, beat his wife, and had a blatant disregarded for the basic tenets of Islam, according to relatives and neighbors.
“Bouhlel was not religious. He did not go to the mosque. He did not pray. He did not observe Ramadan,” his wife’s cousin Walid Hamou told MailOnline. “He drank alcohol, ate pork and took drugs. This is all forbidden under Islam.
“He was not a Muslim. He was a s--t. He beat his wife, my cousin. He was a nasty piece of work.”
Neighbors described the 31-year-old, who was born in Tunisia and had dual French citizenship, as a skirt-chasing father of three bitter about his recent divorce.
“He was rude and bit weird,” a neighbor told BFM-TV. “We would hold the door open for him and he would just blank him.
“He kept to himself but would always rant about his wife. He had marital problems and would tell people in the local cafe. He scared my children though,” the neighbor added.
Bouhlel and his wife separated about two years ago and he moved out of the couple’s apartment in the Le Ray neighborhood of the city, less than 3 miles from the seaside strip where he left a trail of blood and bodies Thursday.
Police searched the home as well as an apartment Bouhlel was living in Friday.
His estranged wife was reportedly taken into protective custody by police after the carnage.
People flee for their lives in Nice, France, as an attacker drives a rented truck furiously along the Promenade des Anglais, running over as many people as he can, on July 14, Bastille Day. This picture was posted by GA Morrow on Instagram.
A friend close to Bouhlel’s wife told the BBC that Bouhlel was thrown out of the home more than a year ago after he became violent.
Truck slams into Bastille Day celebration, killing at least 84
In Tunisia, the killer’s father told RTL, a European news service, that his son had a history of mental illness.
“He had some difficult times,” his dad said. “I took him to a psychiatrist, he took treatment and he said that he was suffering from a very serious illness.”
Bouhlel had a lengthy rap sheet and had been busted for armed robbery, domestic violence and making threats. And he was once arrested after he fell asleep while driving for work. His last conviction came in March, when he received a six-month suspended sentence for using a wooden pallet as a weapon against another driver during a traffic incident.
A lawyer who defended Bouhlel in an assault case last year called him “a classic delinquent.”
Bouhlel was “totally unknown to intelligence services ... and was never flagged for signs of radicalization,” said anti-terror prosecutor Francois Molins.
He had no known ties to any terrorist group, and no radical organization has claimed responsibility for his deadly Bastille Day massacre.
Witnesses said the deranged truck driver screamed, “Allahu Akbar” — “God is great” in Arabic — before opening fire on the crowd Thursday night and then driving through the throngs of people.
However, neighbors who lived near Bouhlel’s apartment said the dad wasn’t religious, and was more interested in women than waging war on the West.
One neighbor called Bouhlel “depressed and unstable, even aggressive” — all qualities she chalked up to his relationship problems. Another said Bouhlel was "more into women than religion.”
“He didn’t pray and liked girls and salsa,” the neighbor said, according to BFM-TV.
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