A professional firefighter will be tried before the Assises de la Gironde, from this Monday for facts that date back to 2017. Arrested in 2019 and detained in the Gradignan remand center since that date, he is accused of attempting to murder and rape of two women. The trial could be held behind closed doors, at the request of one of the civil parties.
On June 1, 2017, one of them was put a lace around her neck to strangle her, near the Bordeaux park. His cries alerted passers-by and made his attacker decamp, who in his hasty flight left the cord behind him. On December 2, 2017, a woman returned to her apartment in the Saint-Seurin district at 4 a.m. when she was approached a few meters from her home by a man who asked her for a light. She continues on her way, saying that she doesn’t have one but he tackles her to the ground from behind, before imposing fellatio on her under the threat of a knife.
Telephony and DNA comparison
Back home, the rape victim alerts her sister and a friend present at her home and the police are quickly notified. As part of the investigation which then began, DNA traces of the attack were found. If the investigations will make it possible to learn that it is about the same DNA on the two scenes of crime, the latter is not enough to identify a suspect. It is by focusing on the telephones that were confined to the scene of the two attacks that the investigators will hit the mark. This technical work makes it possible to identify several people whose DNA is then taken. That of the accused “matched”, leading to his arrest on October 3, 2019.
“He bows to the elements of the file but he explains that he has no memories or awareness of these acts, this is his current position, explains Florence Herbold, his lawyer. It was a particularly difficult time in his life and at one point he lost control of his actions a bit, so he doesn’t remember what he did. She recalls that he does not have a criminal profile in the sense that he was not known to the police. “He was someone who was very stable and who went through a difficult period during a separation. He is not in a position to justify what he has done,” adds his counsel.
On the side of the civil parties, the wait was inevitably trying. “The procedure was extremely long by force of circumstance, comments master Alix Villanove who defends the victim of rape. We are also relieved that the trial is finally coming and we expect a lot from it, but we are apprehensive about the position of the accused.
The psychiatric and psychological expertise of the defendant should have an important place in the debates, if the accused remains in a position of “amnesia” at the hearing.