They had wanted to see if a car exploded when the tank was shot. Pierre Chabrier and Sylvain Lévy, the duo of YouTubers hosting the Vilebrequin channel, were sentenced Monday evening to a fine of 3,000 euros each by the Charleville-Mézières court for having used rifles and pistols during the filming of one of their videos. The prosecution had requested six months’ suspended imprisonment and a fine of 500 euros, stressing that “this type of video and YouTubers are of particular interest to young people and adolescents in construction”, demanding from them “an exemplary attitude towards -vis their audience. »
This decision comes ten days after the announcement of the end of Vilebrequin, the first automotive channel on YouTube in France with nearly 2.5 million subscribers, the duo wanting to take a breather after seven years of weekly production.
Weapons provided by a customs accomplice
In the incriminated video, published at the end of 2022, the two videographers fired live ammunition at two cars destined for scrapping on private land located in Belleville-et-Chatillon-sur-Bar (Ardennes). Ten firearms, provided by a 25-year-old customs officer also fined 2,000 euros, were used. The three men had already filmed a first video two years earlier, where an armored car had been targeted, but this had taken place in a shooting gallery.
The prosecution stressed that the YouTubers’ accomplice “had no legitimacy to organize this shooting session and lend his weapons. » By relying on him, “my clients had the feeling that everything was lined up”, argued the lawyer for the Vilbrequin YouTubers, Me Arnaud Pelpel. As for exemplarity, in the video, the duo repeats around fifteen times “don’t do it again”, he recalled, pleading for release.