300 gendarmes, supported by GIGN, dog teams and in particular dogs of the Saint-Hubert breed, have been looking for 36 hours for the author of a double homicide in the Cévennes. – CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU / AFP
After 36 hours of stalking, the Nîmes prosecutor called the fugitive from the Cévennes to surrender on Wednesday. “He may be able to hear me” and “I would have messages to pass on to him,” said Eric Maurel, speaking to the press in the neighboring village of Saumane early Wednesday evening: ” I call on him to come to his senses, to lay down his arms, and to come and explain his action in the context of a peaceful surrender ”.
The heavily armed man disappeared in the forest after killing his boss and a colleague. The suspect, with a complex profile, adept at hunting and sport shooting and who would have liked to be a sniper in the army, has at least two weapons with him, “a handgun and a long weapon whose characteristics allow consider a very particular danger “with a potential range of 300 meters, added the prosecutor.
The fugitive “knows the terrain perfectly”
Since Tuesday morning, hundreds of gendarmes and half a dozen helicopters have taken turns combing a forest area of 15 km2. The 29-year-old young man is “determined” and “knows the terrain perfectly”, added the gendarmerie colonel Laurent Hass, acknowledging: “He has this advantage over us”.
“The compartment of land on which we act is very vast”, mountains, “dense forest cover” with many caves, added the colonel.
300 gendarmes mobilized
For the night from Wednesday to Thursday, an exceptional device will remain in place, with 300 mobilized gendarmes, supported by the GIGN, dog teams and in particular dogs of the Saint-Hubert breed, whose olfactory tracking capacities are superior to those of the others. races.
Investigators from the Nîmes research section also called on a pair of cartographers (based in Montpellier). “I provide operational support by producing up-to-date maps updated at time T using an aerial vector (…) If there have been changes they will know” such as collapses, landslides, roads hidden, explained Gilles, crisis cartographer for the gendarmerie.
The families of the victims and the killer know each other
In the quiet village of Plantiers, the atmosphere remains very scary for the 260 inhabitants. They are advised to go out as little as possible, in case the fugitive, married to a child from the village with whom he had a child, returns. “I have to be there to tell them: ‘Don’t be afraid’,” Mayor Bernard Mounier told reporters.
The future at Les Plantiers will be to find a possibility of “common good and living together”, insisted the mayor: the families of the victims and the killer know each other and some of their members even work together at the town hall.
Recall of facts
Tuesday morning, around 8 am, the young man arrived at the village sawmill specializing in chestnut wood where he had been employed for about a year and where he was visibly in conflict over work schedule problems. He did not say hello to his boss who pointed it out to him, according to the information provided by the prosecutors of Alès and Nîmes – the latter resumed the investigation opened for “assassinations”.
He then shot in the head of his boss, who died instantly, then in the head of a colleague who had intervened. A second colleague attended the scene and was able to give the alert to the emergency services. In the meantime, the shooter returned home. There he recovered a second weapon and equipped himself as a hunter to “resist the cold and bad weather”, reported Eric Maurel. During searches of his home, a dozen weapons were found and 3,300 ammunition of all calibers.