A man in his twenties was shot dead by the GIGN on Wednesday at midday after stabbing five members of his family in Dover (Ain), concordant sources said. The young man had taken refuge the night before, around 11 p.m. in the house where this blended family, of which he was a part, resides.
Among the victims are his father, his stepmother, but also three minors: two teenage girls – his sister and his stepmother’s daughter – as well as the young child of his father and his stepmother.
The suspect was armed with a rifle and a katana (Japanese sword) when the gendarmes intervened with the reinforcement of the GIGN, specified a source close to the file. “The negotiators tried to get in touch with him all night, in vain, and the assault was launched in the morning,” the source said. According to our information, it was he himself who called the gendarmes on Tuesday to tell them that he had attacked his family.
The gendarmerie said that findings were in progress. A large perimeter has been stretched around the center of this village of a thousand inhabitants, the access to which has been cordoned off. A hundred gendarmes, some of whom come from the Ain group, the GIGN branch, and criminal investigation technicians were on the scene. The Bourg-en-Bresse prosecutor’s office did not wish to comment on the case at this stage. He should publish a press release at the end of the afternoon.
A family settled in 2020
According to the mayor of Dover, a small town neighboring Ambérieu-en-Bugey, this family had lived in the house since July 2020 and “began to invest in the village”. An acquaintance of the family indicated on the spot that the author of the slaughter was 22 years old and worked in a sign of fast food in a nearby town. Firefighters had already intervened at his home in the past because he had not taken his treatment and was becoming violent.
“This morning at 8:30 a.m., the gendarmes asked me not to open my bar,” Tania, a 30-year-old who has been running the village café since March, told AFP. “The mother of one of the victims called me to tell me that she hadn’t been able to reach her daughter since yesterday,” added the shopkeeper.
This drama is one of the deadliest family killings in France in recent years. In October 2020, a father killed his wife, two children and two nephews in Noisy-le-Sec (Seine-Saint-Denis).