In its title Maria, MariaKendji Girac asks a fictional companion what she “wants to do in the dark”. Behind the closed doors of a caravan, parked in a Travelers camp in Biscarrosse (Landes), reality suddenly overtook his words. Against a backdrop of marital dispute, alcohol and drug consumption, the singer, winner of “The Voice” in 2014, was found seriously injured on the night of Sunday April 21 to Monday April 22.
Five days after this gunshot wound, the sequence of events begins to become clearer. Taken to hospital after emergency services intervened Monday morning, the singer and guitarist first described the shot which perforated his chest as accidental, before evoking a staged suicide attempt. The investigation opened by the Mont-de-Marsan prosecutor, Olivier Janson, for “attempted voluntary homicide”, shed light on his actions.
A dozen glasses of alcohol
According to the account of Olivier Janson, who detailed at length the events unfolding on Thursday to the press, Kendji Girac is sitting at a table with his wife Soraya Miranda and their 3-year-old daughter, in the company of friends, Sunday, in Arcachon (Gironde) , during lunch. “From the start of the day he was very excited and I saw that he wanted to drink”, his partner tells investigators. Beers, aniseed aperitif, rosé, red wine, pear… In total, the singer consumes “nearly a dozen glasses” during this late meal.
“The reality is that he drank heavily throughout the entire day on Sunday.”
Olivier Janson, prosecutor of Mont-de-Marsanat a press conference
This day of“massive alcoholism”estimated at more than 2.5 grams of alcohol per liter of blood at the time of the shooting, continues with a couscous evening, once again watered down, at the camp. “It was the holidays, I dropped everything”, admitted Kendji Girac on Wednesday to investigators. The author of Color Gitano And Andalusian hides, in fact, an addiction to alcohol described as “nascent” by the prosecutor. “His bouts were more and more numerous and longer and could last for 48 hours”, reports Olivier Janson. They also give rise to “great tensions in the couple”. To avoid a new argument, Soraya Miranda leaves the evening, claiming that their little daughter is tired. She returns to the caravan at 8:30 p.m. while Kendji Girac, a blackjack enthusiast, goes to join a group of young people at the Biscarrosse casino.
The singer wanted to “scare” his partner
No news was exchanged by the couple until the singer returned to the camp, around 2:35 a.m. If no incident is reported during this trip, Kendji Girac admits to having consumed “two small traces of cocaine”drug he takes “once or twice a week”, according to the prosecutor, citing Soraya Miranda. While the young woman and her daughter fall asleep in the caravan, in the same bed, and not that of the child placed in the living room part of the vehicle, the singer continues the night in the camp, with his loved ones , with whom he shares a few songs. The alcohol is flowing again. He then returns to the caravan, “drunk”, at 2:35 a.m. This noisy entrance wakes up the couple’s child. An argument breaks out, during which Soraya Miranda blames him for his drunkenness. The singer then takes refuge in his SUV, a few meters away, and then turns on the music “very strong” to listen to hymns. Exasperated by the noise, his partner asks him to stop.
Rather than listening to it, the singer takes the wheel. Warned by Kendji Girac’s partner, the singer’s father finds his son, not even leaving the camp, and convinces him to go to sleep. Especially since he has to go to Switzerland the next day and he has a plane “at 7 a.m.”. At 3:30 a.m., the artist reappears in the caravan. His partner finds him, in his underwear, at his daughter’s bedside, telling her that he loves her. While smoking a cigarette, Soraya Miranda hears Kendji Girac crying. But the state “agitated” of the singer, who prevents his daughter from sleeping, provokes a new conflict. “My wife was not very happy”the artist reports to investigators.
“She explained to him that, in these conditions, she had decided to leave and that she had to choose, that it would be either her or him, but one of the two would have to leave.”
Olivier Janson, prosecutor of Mont-de-Marsanat a press conference
It was then that Kendji Girac, “who has never been violent towards his partner or his daughter”, in the words of his companion, changes his tone. He gets angry, starts punching the walls. With her daughter, Soraya Miranda returned to the bedroom, the door not being completely closed. She then hears the musician, alone in the living room, opening and closing cupboards. It’s 5:30 a.m. A gunshot goes off. Panicked, Soraya Miranda leaves the room and finds her companion “one knee on the ground, groaning” with a “ground weapon”. A “iron smell” invades space. She immediately runs outside, goes to the neighboring trailer and asks for help to be called.
According to the ballistic expertise carried out, an entry hole for the bullet inside a sofa was identified, as well as an exit hole outside the passenger compartment of the caravan. Kendji Girac stands “in the immediate vicinity” of this wall at the time of the shot. It evokes “a form of impulse” which consists in “wanting to scare your wife” by simulating a suicide attempt, to “impress” him. This blackmail is not new since it “had said in the past that he was going to shoot himself or cut his throat during arguments”according to Soraya Miranda.
“Sorry lord, what happened?”
According to him, before shooting, Kendji Girac failed to check whether the magazine included ammunition. He believes it “empty”, before taking the weapon. He aims the cannon at his chest and fires. “I wanted to make the trigger sound, I lost control”, he confesses later, during his hearing. At point blank range, the bullet perforated his chest, entering through his left nipple. It comes out in his back, between his ninth and tenth ribs, according to the forensic doctor’s assessment, reported by the prosecutor. A trip “miraculous”because if his lung is perforated, his spleen and his diaphragm affected, his heart is spared.
“No one witnessed the shooting. Everyone said they were woken up, some by the sound of the shooting, some by the cries of Kendji Girac’s little daughter”, details the prosecutor. Kendji Girac was found prostrate and silent on a chair, shortly before 6 a.m., by firefighters who arrived on site. “No one can explain who brought him to this chair or if he managed to get there on his own”, adds the prosecutor. A community member hears the singer say: “Sorry lord, what happened?”
The pistol, which initially disappeared, was finally found in a bush near Kendji Girac’s caravan. Five days after this still troubled night, Kendji Girac is out of the woods. Today, he says he assumes “what he did while regretting it very much”, notes Olivier Janson. The judicial investigation has not been completed, but is not intended to continue, according to the prosecutor. Because, “neither a simulated suicide gone wrong nor an actual suicide attempt constitutes a criminal offense.” Barring any new developments, the legal proceedings could be “very soon” stopped.