In court in Lyon. (archives) – AFP
A violent husband was sentenced Friday to twenty-five years of criminal imprisonment by the Assizes du Rhône for the murder of his wife whom he had hit and crushed with his car. The accused, who did not react to the statement of the verdict, will also have to undergo a socio-judicial follow-up for ten years including an obligation of care. Gilou Rakotoasimbola, 46, cropped hair and wearing a large orange and black jacket that thickens his frail figure, is a “banal man, inserted, normal”, noted in his indictment the lawyer general Charlotte Millon.
“But he is a man deeply hurt on the narcissistic level by this complaint filed by Bernadette, hurt by this separation imposed by the judge […] he hurts his ego, ”she continued. The magistrate had called for a sentence of thirty years’ imprisonment, accompanied by a security sentence of twenty years. On July 25, 2019 in Vénissieux, around 7.15 a.m., Gilou Rakotoasimbola had stormed with his SUV into the parking lot of the company of his wife Bernadette, 43, whom he could not approach since a complaint for domestic violence filed two weeks more early.
A complaint a few days before the murder
In less than three minutes, driving his nearly two-ton vehicle, the respondent alternately struck and crushed the victim, twice. He also made two stops during this streak, putting his foot on the ground to curse his dying wife before leaving the scene. The very violent scene, filmed by the company’s CCTV cameras, was broadcast Thursday on the first day of the hearing, plunging the audience into astonishment.
Bernadette had lodged a complaint on July 8 after the strangulation that her husband had subjected her to the day before and which had caused her to lose consciousness. Gilou Rakotoasimbola had been placed in police custody, then indicted and placed under judicial supervision with a ban on coming into contact with her. On the defense side, Me Stéphanie Rogeron considered the sentence “fair”, indicating that she did not intend to appeal. In her plea, the lawyer explained that his passage to the act intervened “when he understands that he will not speak with Bernadette, that she does not want to speak to him, that it is finished, for him the cut is full “.
“A context of physical, psychological and sexual violence
“What he did is horrible and he knows it”, she added, lamenting that the emotions were “difficult to show” in his client of Malagasy origin. “Do you admit having intentionally killed her?” President Eric Chalbos asked the accused in the morning. “Yes”, he replied, nodding, before expressing “regrets” and asking “forgiveness” from the family of the victim. The day before, he had retained the line of defense adopted during the investigation, refuting any homicidal intention.
The former truck driver, father of two daughters from a previous union, on the other hand denied having been violent towards his wife during their marriage. Bernadette went to the premises of an association to help battered women from April 16, 2018 to discuss “a context of physical, psychological and sexual violence” within her couple, recalled at the bar an official of the Viffil association. “It is a chronicle of an announced death”, lamented in her pleadings the lawyer of the civil parties, Me Isabelle Steyer, the complaint of Bernadette having resulted, according to her, “an escalation of violence”.