Of “many investigations” continue after the discovery of Bernard Denis, the mayor of Saint-Côme-du-Mont, wounded in a field Wednesday November 9, nails driven into the hands and feet
. The Coutances prosecutor’s office took stock this Friday of this troubling affair.
Bernard Denis was found “wounded in the face, showing two nails driven into the top of each of his hands and one nail driven into each of his heels”specifies the prosecutor Michaël Giraudet. The victim was heard by the investigators and delivered his version of the facts.
A violent attack on a political background
The mayor of Saint-Côme-du-Mont would thus have been attacked by two men. After punching him in the face and knocking him face down, these individuals allegedly drove the nails into his hands and feet using a pneumatic nail gun.
Why such violence, recurring for a year
after three previous ones, end of 2021 and beginning of 2022 (his garage had been burned down
and he had received death threats
)? Bernard Denis tells the investigators that his attackers would have reproached him again for his support for Emmanuel Macron during the Presidential. A pattern that was already found in the threatening letters and the hateful tags painted on the wall of his house at the start of the year.
Bernard Denis finally assures that he did not invent his aggression in May
The investigations on these antecedents had been closed without follow-up, for lack of element able to go back to the alleged perpetrators. On the other hand, research on new developments that occurred last May
had made it possible to demonstrate that Bernard Denis had lied. He had admitted to having shot himself at his van. He was also due to appear on November 23 for denunciation of an imaginary crime. But during his hearing this Thursday, the mayor reconsidered his statements and maintained his accusations about the shootings.
Regarding the alleged violent attack in the Saint-Côme-du-Mont field, the Coutances prosecution details that the investigators are hearing several witnesses, are interested in the victim’s environment and are carrying out genetic analyzes in addition to telephone operations.
In the village, residents alongside the mayor told us this Thursday, November 10
than Bernard Denis “thought that these attacks were behind him”. Horrified by the nature of the wounds, they expressed their compassion, some suspecting a larger affair around the aedile.