The emotion is strong. This Monday, there was still shock at the gendarmerie, the day after the terrible tragedy which took place in an apartment in Vémars (Val-d’Oise) where a 43-year-old soldier killed his three daughters aged 10, 7 and 5 years before ending his life with his service weapon. Sylvain C. was a warrant officer and had been working for a little over a year in the Roissy air transport gendarmerie.
For a reason that the investigation by the research section of Versailles (Yvelines), seized by the Pontoise public prosecutor’s office, will have to determine, the forty-year-old has committed the irreparable. It was other gendarmes who discovered the horror. According to our information, psychological monitoring is planned to support the soldiers who entered the apartment. The children’s mother, present at the scene, had to be taken care of by firefighters.
Under heavy rain this Monday morning, the center of Vémars, a small town of 2,300 people located between Roissy-Charles-De-Gaulle airport and the Oise, is almost deserted. No one among the residents we met there knew Sylvain. His photo means nothing to the customers you encounter in the supermarket opposite the church.
On the plateau, where the new neighborhood is being built, among the few passers-by, no one knows the family. The square is empty of any presence, apart from that of the gendarmes who guard the entrance to the building where the events took place. This residence is made up of houses and apartments, where 70 members of the air transport gendarmerie have lived for several years with their families.
The bodies of the victims autopsied during the week
The bodies of Sylvain and his three daughters must be autopsied later this week at the IRCGN (Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie) in Pontoise. “As the alleged murderer is dead, there will certainly be an end to public action after this act,” confides a source close to the investigation.
Sylvain had spent a large part of his childhood and youth in Val-d’Oise. His career in the gendarmerie was “exemplary”, says an internal source. It began in 2006 at the Châtellerault gendarmerie school (Vienna), which closed definitively in 2009. He was assigned to Martinique. The family returned to mainland France in the summer of 2022.
VIDEO. In Vémars, a gendarme kills his three young daughters and commits suicide
How could a policeman with no history have reached such an extremity? According to our information, he and his wife celebrated their 14th wedding anniversary in July, but the couple had been in the process of divorcing for several weeks. What the Pontoise public prosecutor’s office described as a “complicated family context”. But that in no way justifies this gesture. “When we kill children, it is generally to make the surviving parent suffer,” analyzes a gendarme who has already investigated similar family tragedies.
On the public part of Sylvain C.’s Facebook profile, we see a happy family. On October 15, two weeks before the events, he reposted a photo in which we see the father and his three daughters having fun making faces.
“This tragedy shakes us all, especially those who have children,” says a senior officer. When a policeman commits suicide, it is always a tragedy. But when he decides to kill his children… It’s horrible. » The three girls were educated in Vémars in nursery and elementary school, and participated in activities at the leisure center. The mother is also a member of a parents’ association. When they return from the All Saints’ Day holidays, on November 6, support must be put in place in their schools.