Significant resources were deployed to control the ex-soldier on Monday. – Thibaud Moritz / AFP
- The man arrested after a 36-hour hunt on Monday is in critical condition and cannot be heard by investigators.
- He was seriously hit in the throat by a response shot from the GIGN during his arrest.
- Investigations are continuing on the ground.
Seriously injured in the throat by a response shot from the GIGN During his arrest on Monday, the 29-year-old former soldier is not in a condition to be questioned, the Périgueux prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday. Investigations continued on Tuesday to trace its violent drift.
“The judicial procedure” which would suppose his placement in police custody and a possible indictment, “remains at this time suspended to the evolution of his state of health, still uncertain”, declared the prosecutor of the Republic of Périgueux, Solène Belaouar. The suspect “is not immediately audible,” added the magistrate, confirming a source close to the investigation. According to this source, the man, evacuated Monday at the Bordeaux University Hospital, was “plunged back into a coma Monday evening”.
Field investigations
Pending a change in his state of health, “the technical and scientific investigations, sprawling”, according to the prosecutor, “are continuing on the ground” traveled by the suspect, heavily armed, who opened fire on several taken to the gendarmes, without causing any injuries, during a 36-hour hunt in the villages of Lardin-Saint-Lazare and Condat-sur-Vézère.
Monday, many gendarmes including those of the criminal identification, continued to comb this perimeter of wooded and residential areas. At the start of this hunt, the gendarmes had been called in the night from Saturday to Sunday for domestic violence on his ex-wife, whom he was not allowed to approach since the installation of an electronic bracelet May 3 in adjustment of a previous conviction. Between 2015 and 2020, he was convicted four times for violence against his ex-wife with whom he had three children.
Described as “seasoned” and following a “logic” of “suicide by cops” [par policiers], according to the authorities, the man refused to surrender despite the GIGN’s attempts to negotiate. “The 36 hours of stalking showed that he still had good remnants of his military years,” said a source close to the investigation. “Why was he at his end? This is what investigators seek to know, ”she summarized.