The investigating judges went, Wednesday evening, beyond the requisitions of the prosecution: the peacekeeper who opened fire on a car, killing two of its occupants and injuring a third, on the Pont-Neuf, in Paris, was indicted on Wednesday for “voluntary homicide”. In other words, for murder. Self-defence was therefore not accepted at this stage of the proceedings. How to explain such a decision which provokes the anger of part of the profession? Just minutes after the announcement of this indictment, the Alliance union called for a rally Monday noon in Paris.
Return Sunday evening, shortly before midnight. According to the police intervention report, consulted by 20 minutes, a patrol of five police officers from the City Security Company (CSC), a unit responsible in particular for protecting the headquarters of the police headquarters, spotted a car parked in the wrong direction on the Quai des Orfèvres. “The crew moved forward in a determined manner towards the front of the vehicle, placing themselves on either side of the latter”, specifies the document, written barely hours after the tragedy. He would then, according to this same report, suddenly start and then “dash towards one of the officials who moved away to avoid him”. The “only” police officer on the spot to be armed with an assault rifle – the one who was indicted – then opened fire on the car which ended its race on a median strip of the Pont-Neuf.
“Five or six impacts” hit motorists
The first elements show about ten cartridges fired by this 24-year-old peacekeeper who has been in office for less than a year. Among these shots, “five or six impacts” hit motorists. The 25-year-old driver died on the spot, his front passenger shortly afterwards, which is why the policeman is also indicted for “willful violence by a person in charge of public authority resulting in death without intention to give it”. The 42-year-old man in the back seat was seriously injured but his life is no longer in danger.
The opening, in parallel, of the judicial information must make it possible to clarify all the gray areas, starting with the question of self-defence. It is, in fact, customary to opt for the highest qualifications, even if it means lowering them later or declaring a dismissal if they do not ultimately prove to correspond to the progress of the investigations. Clearly: it is not because it is not because this policeman is indicted for murder that he will be sent to an Assize Court for that. And it is not because at the present time self-defense has not been retained that it will not be at the end of the investigation.
Absolute necessity and proportionality
From now on, one of the main challenges of the investigations is to determine whether this peacekeeper used his weapon in a context “of absolute necessity and in a strictly proportionate manner”, as required by the internal security code. . Article 453-1 specifies that this recourse to a weapon may be authorized in the event of an attack on the life or physical integrity of a police officer or of another person or when, after two warnings, the officials consider that in their flight, the persons targeted are likely to kill or injure. Thus, even if the refusal to comply were to be confirmed, it would still be necessary to prove that the driver immediately endangered the lives of the police.
In addition to the use of video surveillance, in particular to precisely determine the position of the various members of the patrol, the angle of the shots will be assessed. Were the shots fired frontally, which could substantiate the thesis of the car heading straight at the police or slightly obliquely? The investigations will also focus on the setting of the weapon, an assault rifle with which various patrols were equipped after the November 2015 attacks. Was it set to fire in bursts, which could explain the large number of shots, or one by one ? In parallel, a second investigation for “attempted intentional homicide against a person holding public authority” was opened in parallel by the Paris prosecutor’s office.