The driver of the red Hyundai I-20 seems ready to take any risk to escape the police. This January 28, 2021, it is 9:21 a.m. when the vehicle takes the Mistral bridge in the opposite direction, which connects Guilherand-Granges to Valence. An unmarked police car, chasing him, hits him. The shock is violent. The officials come out and tackle a bald-headed man in a light blue jacket and jeans to the ground. Aged 45, the suspect, unknown to their services, simply tells them his name is Gabriel Fortin. Before wallowing in silence. In his vehicle, the police discovered a Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol and hundreds of ammunition. That morning, they put an end to the bloody journey of the man the press nicknamed “the HRD killer”.
More than two years after the events, the forty-something is on trial from this Tuesday, before the Drôme Assize Court, for three counts of murder and one attempted murder. The past of this unemployed engineer is marked by two dismissals, in Eure-et-Loir in 2006, then in Ardèche in 2010. Two episodes which seem to have fed his resentment until he took action. Socially isolated, this man, originally from Nancy, is accused of having wanted cold revenge, years later. A sports shooter, he left nothing to chance: he drew up a list of victims to be killed and scouted their places of residence or work. A revenge trip that began two days before his arrest, in Wolfgantzen, a town in the Haut-Rhin.
A journey that begins in Alsace…
On Tuesday January 26, 2021, around 6:40 p.m., Estelle L. was found dead in her car, parked in the parking lot of the Knauf company, specializing in insulation materials, which employed her. The engine is running and the headlights are on. The autopsy establishes that this 39-year-old HRD was killed by four bullets, fired from the left side of her vehicle. An hour later, Bernard M. was attacked at his home by an armed and masked man in the town of Wattwiller, about forty kilometers away. His assailant rings the doorbell of this HRD who works for General Electrics and opens fire with the gun he hides behind a pizza box. Luckily, the victim is not hit. The shooter manages to escape.
Strange coincidence, Bernard M. knows the woman killed in Wolfgantzen: she is a former colleague of the Francel company, in Eure-et-Loir. The investigation will reveal that they both conducted Gabriel Fortin’s dismissal interview in September 2006. Two days later, the accused set off for the south of France. Around 8:45 a.m., Gabriel Fortin went to the Pôle emploi agency in Valence. At the reception, he claims to be called Rachid Arzaoui and explains that he wants to consult job offers. He is asked to wait in the waiting room. Surgical mask on his nose, right hand plunged into a white plastic bag, he suddenly opened fire on an employee. Patricia P., 53, was shot in the chest. The assailant leaves in the car. Its victim cannot be revived.
… And which ends in Ardèche
The investigation will establish that the suspect had been registered in this agency between 2010 and 2013. “But nothing in the file made it possible to establish that there had been any link with Patricia. There had been no personal relations or exchanges with her, ”observes Me Denis Dreyfus, who represents the husband and daughters of the victim. According to the lawyer, it is “the institution” which was targeted by Gabriel Fortin, this mother having found herself “there at the wrong time”. The accused continued on his way and traveled around ten kilometres. He joined the premises of Faun Environnement, a company that manufactures waste collection vehicles in Guilherand-Granges (Ardèche), on the other bank of the Rhône. There, he asks to see Géraldine C. and ends up finding this 51-year-old HRD. He opens fire on her, hitting her in the stomach and face. He then throws down his gun and flees by car. The investigations will reveal that Gabriel Fortin had also been dismissed from Faun Environnement, where he had worked as an engineer between 2008 and 2010. At the time, Géraldine C. had signed his dismissal letter.
The forties, as we have seen, will be arrested a few moments later, as he was heading towards Valencia. Had he completed his murderous journey? Justice in doubt. In the notes entered in his computer, Gabriel Fortin explained that he harbored a stubborn resentment towards an ex-girlfriend from the Lycée, two lawyers he had solicited at the time of his dismissal, and a prosecutor. of the Republic. However, the accused was arrested a few hundred meters from the Valencia court. He had gone there and spotted the exact location of the magistrate’s office. And had written to him several times about the dispute between him and the Francel company. Gabriel Fortin said he was the victim of a plot to prevent him from practicing his profession, claimed to have been wiretapped and ensured that people entered his home in his absence. In handwritten notes seized in his cell, he also explains that justice did not protect him. He evokes a logic of “delayed self-defense”, “a gesture of survival” so as not to become “a wreck”.
“The Cold, Determined Revenge of a Clever Man”
Throughout the investigation, Gabriel Fortin chose to remain silent in the face of the investigators, the magistrates and the experts who examined him. For psychiatrists, “the acts complained of are not to be linked to a mental disorder but above all appear as the cold and determined revenge of an intelligent man, wounded by unbearable rejections from the only environment he thought he could provide him with a social place. They did not detect, in him, any alteration or abolition of discernment at the time of the events.
Me Denis Dreyfus, like the other lawyers for the civil parties, fears that the accused will refuse to appear at his trial. “I still hope that at the time of the hearing of the civil parties, if we are in this case, he can be there. It seems essential to me that he hears the expressions of the victims and of all the circles of suffering that have been generated by his actions”, he explains to us. Before adding: “More generally, it is a file that has moved the whole of France, so he must hear that. His lawyer, Me Romaric Château, did not respond to our requests. The trial is expected to last three weeks. Gabriel Fortin faces life imprisonment.