The town hall paid tribute to an “exemplary” employee. A sixty-year-old municipal employee in Poitiers was shot and killed on Monday in Vienne, “probably” by her husband before his suicide, the prosecution announced.
The two lifeless bodies were found in the garden of a pavilion in Nieuil-L’Espoir, south of Poitiers. It involved an employee of a socio-cultural center in the city of Poitiers and her partner, both aged 60 and living together at this address.
Autopsies scheduled for this week
“It results from the first elements of the investigation that the husband would probably have fired a hunting rifle at his wife, before turning the weapon against himself and killing himself,” said Cyril Lacombe. , public prosecutor in Poitiers. The author was unknown to the gendarmerie and justice services, he said.
The investigation into intentional homicide was entrusted to the research brigade of the Poitiers gendarmerie company “in order to determine the reasons for this criminal act”. Autopsies are planned “this week”, according to the prosecution.
A femicide every three days
In a press release published Tuesday, the mayor of Poitiers Léonore Moncond’huy deplored the “tragic circumstances” of this tragedy, “the first elements of which indicate feminicide by spouse”. The elected official sent “her condolences” to the family and two children of the sixty-year-old, saluting an “exemplary” municipal employee.
On average, a feminicide occurs every three days in France. The Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti recently put forward the figure of 94 femicides in 2023, compared to 118 in 2022, a drop greeted with skepticism by feminist associations.