What adjective would you use to describe the accused asks the president of the court to his girlfriend at the material time. After a moment of reflection, the young woman in her thirties replied: “particular. But not in a good way” she adds.
He made hera little scared“. He drank”a lot of vodka, smoked a lot of cannabis“ describes the insurance advisor who had been dating Damien Aktas for about eight months before the murder of Mamadou Barry, on the evening of July 19, 2019. It is also the end of their relationship at that time, she explains. To know what he had done, “it was unbearable for him“.
On the evening of the facts, Damien Aktas came to her house. “He told me he had fought. That he had felt attacked, that he had responded. He showed me his swollen hand“.
It was only two days later, watching the news on television, that the young woman really understood the seriousness of the facts. The 31-year-old Franco-Guinean academicstruck, in front of his wife, by a man at a bus stop, his head hitting the ground violently, his death from head trauma the next day in hospital.
She discovers his information. At her side, the one who is still her boyfriend says to her: “it’s me“. A few minutes later : “Do you think I should report myself?“Yes, she replies. He changes his mind.”Forget everything, let’s move on” he would have concluded. Frightened, the young woman waits until the next day to go to the police station. “He scared me a little“Even before the facts, she confides. He drank, smoked a lot of cannabis, got angry easily. Once, he even knocked him down.
Schizophrenia
But she knew nothing of his pathology. Damien Aktas suffers from schizophrenia. “As a kid, he talked all the time, he was a chatterbox“. And then he withdrew, confides his mother, a small woman, a little plump, in her fifties. She first evokes the death of Damien’s little brother when the latter was four years old and then more late divorce from her husband.”He wanted to be the leader. He started banging his little sisters“.
From there, things degenerated until the diagnosis fell: schizophrenia. “I lost my second son“. A son she has placed under reinforced curatorshipwho takes her treatments for several years, passes a masonry CAP, then decides to stop her care when the constraint is lifted.
“I no longer opened the door to him“let go of his mother.”He was menacing. His illness frightened me“.
His ex-girlfriend doesn’t want to see him anymore and refuses to let him see their son. She’s not here to testify, but the defendant’s mother says so. The file also says that she filed a complaint against him for violence.
As for him, the treatment he is taking today (he has since been interned in a psychiatric hospital in the care service for difficult patients) makes him amorphous. He’s a dull man, with a blank stare, a little haggard who answers laboriously, with a pasty mouth, to the questions of the presiding judge.
We understand, however, that wants to apologize and he knows he’s here for a murder. The time is not yet for his interrogation on the facts. He will explain himself, or try to do so later.
In the meantime, it is the witnesses who do it. His curator, a woman visibly destabilized by the questions, claims to have warned the hospital several times of the deteriorated state of health of her protege. But it is not her responsibility to decide on hospitalization, she defends herself. “I never imagined that it could be dangerous for others” she says when she herself was often the victim of threats and concedes that she has avoided seeing in recent years, being satisfied with the telephone.
The violence of the facts
He is an agitated man described by the witnesses who follow one another at the bar. “He was going around in circles, he was restless“explains the first witness. A young father who arrived on the scene after the fall of Mamoudou Barry. “I was smoking a cigarette on my balcony when I saw a man fall. His head slammed on the floor“. it was this noise that made him decide to intervene. He exercised a squeezing fist on the back of his skull which was bleeding badly after putting it in the lateral safety position.
The attacker was still there. He would have thrown “shut up“to the wife of Mamoudou Barry. He also heard him say”Dirty nigga of his race, he searched, he found” he told investigators during the hearing.
The issue of racism
Other witnesses did not hear these racist insults or are not formal. A lady claims to have heard before the facts, when Mamoudou Barry had driven past the bus stop, before parking, the young man threw at her “dirty black“. But not after.”Then he was talking to himself“Damien Aktas is also being prosecuted for these racist insults, which constitute an aggravating circumstance.
But according to his girlfriend at the time or his parents, the young man was not racist. In any case, he was not known to make such remarks. It is also difficult to say with certainty whether he had been drinking or taking drugs that day.
What is not debatable, however, is the way Damien Aktas left. “Calmly“We repeated several witnesses. Walking, not running. So he wouldn’t have fled. He would just be gonecontinuing to talk to himself.
He faces 20 years in prison.