End of the run. A former soldier, on the run for nearly a year after being sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife, was arrested Thursday in Metz. The man was “arrested as part of the execution of the sentence pronounced by the Assize Court of the Alpes-Maritimes and the arrest warrant issued against him”, indicated the public prosecutor of the city. Moselle Yves Badorc, confirming information from the daily The Lorraine Republican. “He was presented to the Metz prosecutor’s office and imprisoned,” said the magistrate.
On Christmas Day 2017, this 43-year-old ex-soldier stabbed his 41-year-old wife to death in front of their three children, 9, 14 and 15, in Toulon (Var). Tried by the Var Assize Court in April 2021, he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.
Sentenced in absentia
Having appealed, he was released due to a delay in scheduling his second trial: his pre-trial detention, which was too long, had become arbitrary. He was subject to various obligations by his judicial review, pending his appeal trial, scheduled for July 2022. But on the day of the hearing, the person concerned did not appear. Sentenced then in absentia to life imprisonment by the Assize Court of the Alpes-Maritimes, an arrest warrant was issued against him.
Yves Badorc praised the work of investigators from the Boulay gendarmerie company (Moselle), who spotted the fugitive’s apartment in the village of Varize. When they arrived on Thursday, the fugitive had left the scene. But helped by the men of the PSPG (Peloton specialized in the protection of the gendarmerie) of Cattenom, the gendarmes were finally able to arrest him in a hotel located on the site of the Technopôle de Metz.