Who wants Bernard Gérard’s skin? At the beginning of December, the mayor of Marcq-en-Barœul, near Lille, made a very worrying discovery. Under conditions and for reasons that an ongoing investigation should determine, the braking system of his vehicle was deliberately damaged. But what exactly do we know about this dark affair?
What exactly happened?
The sabotage was discovered when the mayor of Marcq had just returned from a family vacation, for the end of year celebrations. It was also the mayor’s wife who was surprised to see a red light lit on the vehicle’s dashboard.
As he is not a mechanic, the elected official took his vehicle to a mechanic, who quickly noticed that the ABS cables were cut. Same observation from an insurance expert also contacted by the elected official. At Huffington PostBernard Gérard made it clear that there was nothing accidental in the problem, since the cables “had been cut with pliers”.
Willingness to harm, or even worse?
James Bond had paid the price, discovering in the middle of a mountain road that the brakes of his car had been sabotaged to kill him. Is this the case here? In fact, ABS is a braking assistance system preventing the vehicle’s wheels from locking in the event of heavy braking, and therefore losing grip with the risk of ending up in a ditch. Cutting the ABS cables is different from cutting the brake hoses, which directly provide braking by allowing the pads to come into contact with the discs.
A case of this kind shook the town of Jouarre, in Seine-et-Marne, in 2022, when several residents found the ABS cables of their vehicles cut. At the time, a source close to the investigation explained to our colleagues at Briard Country that “it would not affect the safety of the vehicle, since it is always possible to brake, and you can drive without it, but the impact on driving is still not excluded at this stage”, reports a source close to the investigation.
What will happen now?
The mayor of Marcq-en-Barœul has already filed a complaint against “X” for damage. The Lille public prosecutor’s office will determine whether it is appropriate to reclassify the facts as attempted homicide. One thing is nevertheless certain at this stage, the sabotage was not carried out by chance on the elected official’s car.
HAS BFM, Bernard Gérard insisted that it was a voluntary act: “It cannot be something fortuitous. We didn’t run over a stone or anything like that. Apparently it’s not an animal, that’s what was determined,” he explained. Especially since his vehicle was not parked in the street, but in the alley leading to his home, blocked by a locked gate. The vandal therefore entered the mayor’s property to commit his crime.