a gendarme responsible for a fatal shooting placed in pre-trial detention

A gendarme, accused of a fatal shooting during the arrest of a man at his home in Poggio d’Oletta (Haute-Corse), was indicted for intentional homicide and placed in pre-trial detention, announced the Bastia prosecutor’s office Saturday February 24. The events occurred on Thursday around 6 a.m. during an operation as part of an investigation into “counts of concealment of theft, criminal association and organized gang theft”. Laurent-Franck Lienard, his lawyer, told AFP that he had appealed against this placement in pre-trial detention.

“One of the people targeted in the investigation”was “otherwise unfavorably known to the judicial authorities”was fatally “bullet wound”, then clarified the public prosecutor of Bastia. He added that this operation was aimed “the arrest of several people in the departments of Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse”.

The gendarme evokes “an involuntary gesture”

There “victim was not armed at the time of the incident, despite the presence of weapons in his home”, said prosecutor Jean-Philippe Navarre on Saturday. During his custody, the gendarme accused did not “unable to explain the circumstances of his shooting”, noted Jean-Philippe Navarre. The soldier declared “not having the memory of having pulled the trigger of his weapon, therefore arguing that it was an involuntary gesture”according to the prosecutor.

The autopsy revealed that the killed man had been hit by three projectiles. The medical examination and analysis of on-board cameras by the gendarmes suggest “the existence of a single shot, carried out using a submachine gun, the selector of which appeared to have been positioned in free burst mode”added the prosecutor. “The doctrine of use of this weapon” usually prescribed “the use of ‘piecemeal'”with which the weapon only fires one bullet at a time.