He harassed his ex as if she “belonged to him”, as if she was “his thing”. Faced with threats and intimidation, Eva’s family had even filed at least seven complaints against the young man. In vain. He ended up committing the irreparable: shoot the schoolgirl’s new fiancé. Two shotgun bullets. Wednesday evening, Steeve Arnoux, 24, was found guilty of the assassination of Jason Maimone, killed on the evening of October 1, 2019 in the parking lot of a supermarket in Gattières, near Nice.
The Assize Court of the Alpes-Maritimes sentenced him to thirty years of criminal imprisonment, accompanied by a two-thirds security sentence. Yannick Tournier, a 19-year-old accomplice at the material time, tried alongside him for driving him to the meeting point agreed with the victim, was sentenced to eighteen years in prison.
Unequivocal exchanges on Messenger
Before the tragedy, Jason Maimone had also filed a complaint for death threats and had the gendarmes read his exchanges with Steeve Arnoux. “I’m going to kill you, you declared war my friend”, writing the latter on Messenger. To which Eva’s new companion had replied: “It’s been a month since we have to see each other but you are slipping away. I hope you know how to shoot and, as I told you before, aim for the head or the heart”.
The Advocate General had only requested fifteen years in prison against the accomplice, but the sentence finally imposed on the main defendant, “the very definition of a psychopath”, he considered during the trial, according Nice morning. Steeve Arnoux had, according to him, decided that “whoever puts himself[it] in his way will be[it] his enemy “.