Four people aged 15, 16, 17 and 25 were still in custody on Monday, after an episode of rare violence against gendarmes, Saturday evening in Lesparre-Médoc (Gironde). No less “of a hundred shots” were fired against them, indicates the prosecution of Bordeaux to 20 minutes this Monday.
Saturday evening around 10:40 pm, two crews of the territorial brigade of Lesparre (Gironde) were called “on an arson of vehicle which occurred on a ground located at a place called” Connau “in Lesparre-Médoc” tells the parquet floor. The first crew set off on a dirt road that ran alongside the land where the fire had taken place and led to houses, while the second parked their vehicle on the road to Connau. At the same time, a patrol of the PSIG (gendarmerie surveillance and intervention platoon), also alerted, followed the convoy not far from there.
Leads received in the thigh
When the gendarmes arrived, the situation was calm. “Then gunshots rang out from a small wooded area not far from the house” indicates the parquet floor. One of the soldiers then called for “cease fire”, but the shooting continued. If the first shots appeared to have been fired in the air, they then took the direction of the gendarmes and their vehicle. One of them was to specify later that he had “felt pellets fall in his hair”.
Covered behind the engine block of his vehicle, another gendarme continued to “wipe heavy fire. Pellets hit him in the thigh “without the projectiles going through the material of his pants and injuring him.” Meanwhile, the PSIG patrol made up of four soldiers was also engaged, and also came under heavy fire.
Shooting for over an hour
One of the family members living there would then arrive in the van, honking their horns, and ending the shooting. “This had lasted without interruption for more than an hour, and nearly a hundred shots had been fired” specifies the prosecution. The gendarmes’ vehicle had received numerous pellet impacts but also a bullet impact.
Reinforcements then intervened to free the soldiers. Four individuals were arrested “who appeared to constitute the group of people in which the shooters were located.” “
The gendarmes did not use their weapons “at any time”.
The gendarmes did not use their weapons “at any time”, given their intervention protocol which forbids them to do so when the “targets” cannot be located, further specifies the prosecution.
The Lesparre-Médoc research brigade was seized of the open investigation of the count of attempted voluntary homicide on persons holding public authority. The soldiers were not physically injured “but very shocked by their aggression and the determination of the shooters. “