A verdict almost six years after the facts. Killian B., the high school student from Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes) fascinated by the Columbine massacre and who opened fire on his comrades in 2017, injuring five, was sentenced this Wednesday in Nice to five years of criminal imprisonment. Having already served three years in pre-trial detention between 2017 and 2020, and given the two years suspended probation that accompany his sentence, the young man of today 21 years old will not return behind bars.
Judged alongside him by the Assize Court for minors in the Alpes-Maritimes for this first school shooting in France, Lucas R., his close friend, accused of having helped him, was sentenced to three years, one of which suspended. Having already completed two years of detention, he is also free. Their trial took place behind closed doors in Nice, after a first hearing canceled in March 2020.
He wanted revenge on a dozen comrades
Described as discreet, even withdrawn, the first had entered his high school at lunchtime on March 16, 2017, armed with a shotgun, a shotgun, a revolver and a homemade bomb. . Informed of his friend’s project, the second had accompanied him to collect the weapons from his grandfather’s house and then dropped off by scooter at the Tocqueville high school in Grasse. The day and time had been chosen by the high school student according to the schedule of his class, because he wanted to take revenge on a dozen of his classmates.
But he had finally taken the wrong room and had injured his victims somewhat randomly in the yard. Except in the case of the principal of the establishment, injured in the left arm after having intervened, and of a student whom he considered to be “scum”.
In its judgment, the Assize Court found him guilty of several attempted premeditated intentional homicide and his friend Lucas of complicity in these crimes.
“May what happened never happen again”
Considering that the intention was acquired but that it was necessary to take into account the alteration of discernment established by certain psychiatrists about the author, the prosecution had requested ten years of criminal imprisonment against Killian B. and four years, two of which were suspended for his accomplice. The first risked up to twenty years in prison.
The defense of the two young men, who appeared free, had supported “the simulation or the failed act, more than the homicidal intention”, indicated Me Luc Febbraro, the lawyer of Lucas R., about the facts committed by his client. Me Camille Radot, in defense of Killian B., had asked for the requalification of these facts of “attempted assassinations” in “willful violence with weapons”.
President Francis Lec, for the National Union of National Education Management Staff (SNPDEN), who asked to be a civil party, defended for his part “a measured attitude”, judging it important “that beyond leniency, we hear a message of firmness so that what happened never happens again and that we protect the world of education exposed daily to attacks”.