He liked to play and provoke with the service weapons, until the day a tragedy occurred. Day when the shot accidentally went off and fatally injured his colleague. The facts occurred in March 2018, at the Saint-Denis police station. On Thursday, he appeared in court.
In tears and stunned, Nicolas M., 39, was found guilty by the Bobigny criminal court of the involuntary manslaughter of his colleague Alice Varetz and of endangering other civil servants through reckless handling of weapons. 2015 to 2018. During a highly emotional hearing at the beginning of February, the prosecution requested a three-year prison sentence for the former peacekeeper.
On the wooden benches of the civil parties, during the trial, were seated around ten former colleagues of Nicolas M. in Saint-Denis, arms crossed and closed faces, a mother and a best friend in tears and the portrait of a young woman with dimples, 25 years old, radiant with her “Police” cap on her head. “Fallen on ordered duty”, euphemized the sign placed by her relatives at the foot of the bar.
Fourier at the Saint-Denis police station, and as such responsible for the entry and exit of equipment from the armory, Nicolas M. had a reputation as a hothead with firearms. “He thought he was a cowboy, a super cop, he liked to ride machines in the corridors of the police station,” summarized one of his colleagues before the General Inspectorate of the National Police (IGPN).
He “had fun pointing guns at some of his colleagues”
Regularly, the police officer with the long, angular face and close-cropped hair had fun pointing guns at some of his colleagues, or playing in front of them with his pistols without a safety catch, assuring them: “The shot won’t go off, the shot won’t go away. » But in 2018, a few minutes before 10 p.m., the gun went off.
On the evening of the events, Nicolas M. was “in a hurry”. Eager for the night shift to take their place. In a hurry to return home to his wife and 6-month-old baby. His cocked Sig Sauer in hand, he found himself sitting at his ticket counter when Alice Varetz and her crew returned from outside and returned their equipment. The scene that follows remains confusing. Did he deliberately target the victim as a “game” when the projectile went off despite him, because he had not secured his pistol, as the prosecution and the civil party believe? Or did the shot go off accidentally while he was sliding his wheelchair towards the office, as he claims? Regardless, the bullet entered the young woman’s left cheek before exiting the other side of her head. After three weeks in a coma, she was “unplugged” and died on April 10.
Faced with the portrait of his victim, the defendant admitted the facts at the hearing but tried to minimize them by blaming laxity, widespread in the police according to him, with regard to the rules for handling weapons. The room, full of hostile former colleagues, became exasperated. “This is not behavior that I “introduced” within the police, it is behavior that I reproduced. I am aware of the stupidity that this involves,” explained, overwhelmed, this father of two children, with a bent back, dismissed from the police following this tragedy.
This ex-police player was ultimately sentenced to four years in prison, three of which were suspended. The court ordered the adjustment of his year in prison.