The police are still looking for Louis F., the detainee who escaped Tuesday, December 21 during a transfer between the Osny remand center (Val-d’Oise) and the Pontoise hospital. The prison convoy came under fire and an officer was shot. Franceinfo looks back on the circumstances of this escape, the eighth of its kind in France in 2021.
The escape took place in a hospital parking lot
Tuesday, around 9 p.m., Louis F. was discovered mutilating his arm in his cell at Osny remand center. The prison administration decides to extract him in order to take him to Pontoise hospital, just 800 meters away. The detainee is taken care of by the fire brigade and escorted by three unarmed prison officers.
As the convoy arrives at the entrance to the emergency room, the officers are targeted by gunfire, blamed on “at least one accomplice with a long weapon”, according to the public prosecutor of Val-d’Oise. One of the officers is shot in the back, but the projectiles are countered by his bulletproof vest. During the shooting, the detainee manages to escape with his accomplice in a vehicle. A lookout was also present on the scene, specifies a police source at France Televisions.
The police have not, for the time being, found the trace of the detainee and his accomplice, whose identity has not been the subject of any declaration. An investigation was opened by the Pontoise public prosecutor’s office for the counts of “organized gang escape” and “attempted murder of a person holding public authority”. It was entrusted to the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police.
The life of the injured prison officer is not in danger
Admitted to the Pontoise hospital, the prison officer hit in the back underwent additional examinations. “His days are not in danger”, explained the prison administration to AFP. The day after the events, he received a visit from the Minister of Justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, who then went to the Osny remand center to bring his “unwavering support” the supervisors who supervised the medical transfer.
The three supervisors are “psychologically extremely marked by what they experienced yesterday”, declared Eric Dupond-Moretti at the exit of the establishment. Same state of shock for the firefighters present during the escape, who are “shaken and rest”, said the Sdis du Val-d’Oise.
Since 2019, the transfers of detainees are no longer provided by the police, but by prison officers, who are not all authorized to carry a weapon. To explain the absence of an armed agent during the failed transfer of December 21, the Ministry of Justice cites two reasons: the slowdown in the rate of training in carrying weapons due to the health crisis and the low level of risk of this type of transfer. “Over the past three years, only one escape (during a medical extraction) has occurred with an external complicity. The most classic scenario is that of the escape of the detainee”, detailed the Chancellery to franceinfo.
The detainee is suspected of murder, forcible confinement and rape
Aged 28, Louis F. was remanded in custody at Osny remand center on October 1, 2021, as part of an assassination investigation. The case concerns the murder of an 18-year-old young man on September 28, 2021 in Valenton (Val-de-Marne), shot dead while watching a football match with friends, according to The Parisian. Already convicted of traffic offenses and acts of aggravated violence, Louis F. is also suspected of vio with forcible confinement, acts committed in 2019 in his city of residence, Yerres (Essonne), France Télévisions has learned from a judicial source.
His violent escape took place three days after the arson attack on his parents’ house in Yerres, as noted The Parisian. A fire which had not made any victims, the pavilion being empty at the time of the facts. “The very next day, they (the parents) left the city”, explained to the daily the mayor (DVD) of the city, Olivier Clodong. A disturbing sequence that makes residents fear the settling of scores linked to the murder of Valenton.