Brigitte Macron’s grand-nephew would he have been beaten up for a simple problem of purchasing power? Judged this Monday, June 5 for having struck, on the evening of May 15, Jean-Baptiste Trogneux while he was trying to protect his famous chocolate factory in downtown Amiens (Somme) on the sidelines of a wild demonstration against the reform of the pensions, the three defendants in any case assured that they did not know him, and tried to dismiss the “political motive” put forward by the prosecutor.
Why then did you want to pile up garbage cans right in front of this store, if not for its known links with the first lady? “Because their chocolates are too expensive”, dares, bravado, Yohan L. At 35, homeless multi-convicted for violence and under reinforced curatorship, the oldest of the band does not have his tongue in his pocket. . According to him, it is even he who would have been the victim of the aggressiveness of the young boss, who came down from his home to disperse them.
“I didn’t see him coming, he jostled me and I fell to the ground. I wanted to retaliate but I missed my shot, and someone carried me out of the group, “says Yohan L., who therefore did not commit any violence – which several witnesses contradict, speaking of several shots. fist. “Fortunately, otherwise he would be dead,” he had also seen fit to specify in police custody. “Do you consider yourself violent? asks the court. “When I can, yes”, replies tit for tat the person concerned.
“There were some who were really determined”
The only witness called to the bar, a neighbor living opposite the famous shop and who had come to the aid of the victim, confides in any case the “fear” he felt that evening. “My children told me there was a fight. I went to the window, I saw three individuals hitting a person on the ground. I said to myself : They are slaughtering him, he unfolds. When I got downstairs, I tried to create a diversion, I saw a crowd coming towards me… It was a minority, but there were some who were really determined, and not just there to move garbage cans. It was then that he identified Jean-Baptiste Trogneux on the ground. “He was totally stunned, he no longer knew where he was,” he explains. Violence that earned the merchant, aged 30, four days of total incapacity for work (ITT).
VIDEO. Attack on Jean-Baptiste Trogneux: 12 and 15 months in prison for two of the three defendants
Also dismissed, and judged in passing, like Yohan L. for having broken a glass door at Amiens station during a demonstration in mid-April, Florian C., 20, is much less talkative. He too had no idea of the identity, he said, of the owner of the premises. But recognizes his involvement: “I slapped. ” For what ? “Because he pushed one of my buddies”, he delivers by way of explanation, without us actually detecting the flame of the militant in him. Failing that, rather that of the follower in search of sensations.
“I am not sure that you are aware of the mechanisms of 49.3…”
“For the SNCF gate, you said: Others tapped so I did too, I didn’t think, reads the prosecutor. And there? Shrug in the cubicle. “I am not sure that you are aware of the mechanisms of 49.3…”, comments the president, recalling the illiteracy of Florian C., recognized as disabled, and his precarious status: former child in care, unemployed, placed on the door of his reintegration home after being with his parents.
Clearer in his explanations, the last defendant, Damien F., 22, presents himself as an independent journalist on TikTok. It was precisely the press armband that he wore on the evening of the events that had allowed Jean-Baptiste Trogneux to identify him, evoking a “blow to the temple”. But in the box of the defendants – all three appeared detained after the referral of the hearing on May 17 – he pleaded error. No witness points to him and the video surveillance images shown in court are of no help. Unemployed, unable to read or write due to a disability close to dyslexia, he broke down in tears twice. “I didn’t touch him,” he swears.
Pointing to a “gratuitous, violent and serious” assault, the prosecutor had requested prison sentences for each of the defendants, up to three and a half years for Yohan L., the main suspect. He was finally only partially followed, since he was sentenced to thirty months in prison, half of which was suspended while Florian C. received 24 months, 12 of which were suspended. As for Damien F., he was released.