The mysterious series of fires started on December 19, 2022. That night, the Poêles et Compagnie store in Bain-de-Bretagne (Ille-et-Vilaine) was ravaged by flames. Two days later, a store of the same brand was targeted by a fire in La Mézière near Rennes. Shortly after, it was the Châteaubriant store (Loire-Atlantique) which experienced an attempted fire. The security guard had this time managed to scare away men lurking nearby in the middle of the night and who had left behind a crowbar of gasoline.
In this case, a total of sixteen people were indicted, we learned this Sunday from the Rennes public prosecutor’s office. Seven of the suspects are in pre-trial detention in this case and “the damage is around 5 million euros for the moment”, specified the public prosecutor of Rennes, Philippe Astruc, confirming information from the Parisian.
Very quickly, the criminal trail was favored after this series of fires. Using the telephone, the gendarmes began by tracing three suspects. They also identified a young woman, a disgruntled and threatening customer, with whom the boss of Poêles et Compagnie had an altercation shortly before the start of the fires. However, this woman’s companion, a young entrepreneur born in 1998, had numerous contacts shortly before the events with one of the suspects in the arson attacks, according to the Parisian.
One of the suspects targeted by several complaints for scams
Both were placed in pre-trial detention but this did not prevent other acts of vandalism and fires from being committed on new stores in the region, with the company manager’s vehicle even being ravaged by flames. Other suspects were indicted for these facts, all investigated in Rennes. The Parisian also indicates that three new individuals were arrested last month, suspected of having set fire to an individual’s car in Guérande (Loire-Atlantique) in August 2022. The victim’s neighbor was a young couple who were sometimes too noisy with whom she had had an altercation: the young entrepreneur and his partner.
Other investigations are underway into the activities of this entrepreneur after several dozen complaints from customers claiming to be victims of energy renovation scams from companies he managed.