The verdict is more severe than at first instance. The Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court sentenced Quentin Destrez, ex-police officer, on appeal to 26 years of criminal imprisonment for killing his ex-companion with 135 stab wounds in Yvelines in the summer of 2019. At first instance, the ex-police officer had been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for murder of a partner. The ex-police officer was sentenced to several additional penalties, including the ban on carrying a weapon for fifteen years, ineligibility for ten years as well as the withdrawal of his hunting license for fifteen years.
For Me Gérard Chemla, lawyer for the victim’s family, this decision sends “a clear message” to Quentin Destrez. “We could not be fooled by the posture he had throughout the hearing,” he adds in reference to the ex-police officer’s line of defense. He continued to assure during the six days of hearing that he did not maintain a relationship with the victim, despite several ambiguous elements in the file: past cohabitation and sharing the same bed and numerous messages with a romantic tone. , notably.
“Savage” and “barbaric” behavior
Quentin Destrez has assured several times that it was the deceased young man, to whom he announced that he was leaving him for a woman, who would have taken out the knife used to commit this crime. The ex-police officer would have only turned the weapon against Dylan Jozwiak, before being taken by a “coup of madness”. What followed was “wild, barbaric” behavior, by the accused’s own admission: 135 stabbings inflicted in a poorly lit alley in Jouars-Pontchartrain, a small town in Yvelines where the victim resided, on the night of June 27 to 28, 2019.
At the heart of the debates, the question of the “secret” of the romantic relationship maintained by MM. Destrez and Jozwiak, which nevertheless “exists and is brilliant”, according to the attorney general. A relationship nevertheless described as “toxic” by all parties and several witnesses who came to testify at the bar, including psychiatrist Isabelle Teillet, who examined Quentin Destrez.