The mayor of Châteauneuf-sur-Cher, in the Cher, was the victim of a violent attack on Wednesday August 31. “We can’t go on like this”exhibited in shock William Pelletier at France Bleu Berry.
>> Nearly 1,300 attacks, threats or insults recorded in 2020 against elected officials, i.e. three times more than in 2019
According to France Bleu, the facts occurred on Wednesday at the end of the afternoon in the parking lot of the town hall, when the elected official settled in his vehicle, window open. A 19-year-old young man then arrested him and immediately beat him. Hit in the face, the 72-year-old mayor had to undergo stitches. The pair were said to have had a verbal altercation a few weeks earlier, with the chosen one berating a group of youngsters who were using the campsite as a motocross ground.
Elected for 27 years, William Pelletier now admits to being afraid. “If I do not have the right to tell three or four young people to stop doing the circus on a campsite, that I am attacked in the parking lot of the town hall two months later, if it is to be elected so that ‘we get beaten up, massacred… We can’t go on like this, it’s free!’he lamented.
The alleged attacker is a young resident of the town. He was arrested the very evening of the attack by the gendarmes for “violence against a person holding public authority resulting in total incapacity for work of less than 8 days”. He was taken into custody and will be tried in immediate appearance on Friday September 2.
Philippe Moisson, president of the association of mayors of Cher, demands a firm decision from the courts. “We have people who, for a yes or a no, take justice into their own hands. Today, whether you are mayor, firefighter or policeman, people don’t respect anything”, he hammered, stressing that the elected representative of Châteauneuf-sur-Cher is “psychologically bruised”.
Last July, a man who had deliberately hit the mayor of Bazincourt-Sur-Epte (Eure) in June was tried in immediate appearance and sentenced to 11 months in prison, including 7 months.