The police officer who fired the shot that caused the death of a 24-year-old motorist on Wednesday during a refusal to comply in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes), was finally indicted for intentional violence, Friday, September 9. For their part, the relatives of the victim denounce a homicide. Here is what we know about this case.
The sequence of events
The facts took place around 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, when a car was spotted “zigzag dangerously” on the fast track, according to the Departmental Directorate of Public Security. Police then attempt to intercept the vehicle. “having engaged in dangerous behavior”, details a press release from the public prosecutor of Nice, Xavier Bonhomme. The driver of the vehicle refuses to stop, flees on avenue Henri-Matisse, before turning around and hitting “frontally the police vehicle which had chased him”.
“After several warnings” asking the driver to get out of the vehicle, the passenger from the on-site police team shoots through the window once at the driver. This version of the facts is “corroborated by witnesses present at the scene”, says the prosecutor. Of the videos circulating on social networks show the policeman using his weapon while the vehicle is stationary after having backed up a few meters to try to get out of his face-to-face with the police car. The driver died at the scene after paramedics attempted to resuscitate him.
The driver was already known to the police
The driver was a 24-year-old young man traveling without a license in a stolen vehicle. The victim had already been convicted, “in particular for acts of driving without a license, offenses against narcotics legislation and theft and concealment of theft”says the prosecutor.
He was accompanied by a passenger who was arrested and taken into custody “counts of attempted homicide on a person holding public authority, concealment of theft and refusal to comply”. This man is 26 years old. He is unknown to the police, but is in an irregular situation on French territory, according to the prosecutor. He will be presented to a magistrate for his indictment and the prosecutor requests his placement in pre-trial detention.
The policeman indicted for “wilful violence with a weapon”
The police officer who used his weapon was indicted for “willful violence with a weapon causing death without intention to give it” and was prohibited from carrying a weapon, announced the public prosecutor. Now placed under judicial supervision, this 23-year-old policeman, assistant in a road safety brigade, had been placed in police custody as part of an open judicial investigation. “to determine in a contradictory manner and under the authority of an examining magistrate, the exact circumstances of the shooting”. For its part, the IGPN, the police force, was charged with an investigation for intentional homicide.
The policeman’s lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, reacted to franceinfo on Friday: “Our client is devastated by the tragedy that has unfolded (…). He has never wanted such a tragic outcome”, he says. The policeman goes “from now on to submit to the legal proceedings which are beginning and which will have to establish whether he has committed a fault or whether he is found in the legitimate exercise of his right”.
The relatives of the victim denounce a “homicide”
The prosecution’s scenario is rejected by the victim’s relatives, for whom “it is obvious that we have [affaire] to a homicide, there is no discussion about it”, had declared one of the lawyers of the family, Me Sefen Guez Guez. The policeman’s reaction “is clearly disproportionate”insisted this lawyer from the Nice bar. “Regardless of the circumstances or the reality of his prior behavior, there was no life-threatening danger to justify killing this man in cold blood.”
Asked about the videos of the drama Thursday morning on franceinfo, the director general of the national police, Frédéric Veaux, mentioned the “weight and violence of certain images”. “In a case like this, it is the whole action that must be analysed. What happened before, in the environment. The perception that the police may have had at the time of intervention”he insisted.