At the specially composed assize court in Paris
It took Renato Silva almost 24 hours to understand that he had just been the victim of an attack. “I didn’t understand that he was a terrorist, we don’t always think about that kind of thing,” insisted the 31-year-old young man this Friday, his hands clinging to the bar of the specially composed assize court. It took three police officers to show up in his hospital room for him to understand: he was Radouane Lakdim’s first victim, and his survival was a miracle. The terrorist began his deadly journey in the Aigles parking lot, on the heights of Carcassonne, before shooting at CRS and then opening fire in the Super U in Trèbes. “In fact, he had his hands in his jacket, I didn’t even see any weapons, I didn’t see anything,” explains the man who is now a postman in the Narbonne region.
This March 23, 2018, shortly before 10 a.m., he decides to take a detour through the Aigles parking lot before going to do the few errands his mother asked him to do. The place is known for being a gay meeting place. He simply states that he wanted to admire the “fantastic view”. Renato Silva had only arrived for a handful of minutes when he crossed paths with Radouane Lakdim. “The terrorist arrives and asks me what I’m doing there, I told him that I was finishing my cigarette,” he recalls, in a soft voice marked by a slight Portuguese accent. At the same moment, Jean Mazière, 62 years old, arrives. It will be his “last vision”. “That’s when I got shot in the head. » He will not see the terrorist kill the sixty-year-old at point blank range. He won’t feel him leaning over him to steal his car keys either.
“I couldn’t tell where I was”
“Suddenly, I wake up, I look at the sky, I try to get up,” he continues. By some miracle, the bullet didn’t kill him. It nevertheless left him with serious after-effects. Renato Silva lost the use of one eye and is deaf in one ear. These few grams of lead, still lodged in his skull – extraction is too risky – regularly cause him pain.
When he regains consciousness – about an hour later, according to telephone data – he calls his mother. “I knew where I was, but I couldn’t say where I was. It’s because of the bullet, I lost words. » Renato Silva then tries to go to his car, parked at the entrance to the car park, he is unaware that the terrorist has stolen it. It will take almost an hour and a half to cover 50 meters. A motorist eventually saw him on the side of the road and raised the alarm. “Everyone says that I have a second life, that’s also how I see things,” he insists.
“No one knew where he was”
If Renato Silva claims that he did not know Jean Mazières, he remembers that he had already encountered the sixty-year-old in the same parking lot. This retired winemaker had arrived a few moments ago when he was shot in the head. His relatives looked for him all day. “No one knew where he was,” recalls Martine, his widow, at the helm. That day, this petite woman with a strong Southwestern accent came home from work around 11 a.m. She then notices that her husband is absent. Above all, he does not answer his phone, which is contrary to his habits. She calls neighbors, friends. No one has seen this man whom everyone describes as “attentive”, “benevolent”, “always smiling”. He had just sold his vines to take care of their son, who suffered from a disability.
The anxiety takes a new turn when news spreads of an attack in a nearby supermarket. A friend goes to the Super U to see if his car is parked in the parking lot. They did not learn the terrible news until late in the afternoon, around 5 p.m. It is the brother of Martine Mazières, a former police officer, who will be the first to be informed. “He told me ‘I’ll be there straight away’, that’s when I understood,” she recalls.
From this trial, his widow hopes to obtain answers. “I want to know why him,” she insists. “For two reasons which are not reasons,” begins the president of the Assize Court delicately. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was in a place frequented by homosexuals.” Except Radouane Lakdim had “an aversion” to homosexuals. This crime is considered the first homophobic attack in France.