A man killed and another seriously injured by police fire after a refusal to comply in Vénissieux

A man is dead and another is brain dead, after being hit by police fire, on the night of Thursday August 18 to Friday August 19, announced the prosecution, which opened an investigation for “refusal to comply aggravated”.

The two police officers who used their respective weapons were placed in police custody and heard by the general inspectorate of the national police (IGPN), the “police of the police”. Their police custody was lifted on Friday evening. While the first elements “seem to support the self-defense hypothesis”additional investigations should however “confirm the exact circumstances in which the police used their weapons”according to the Lyon prosecutor’s office, which announced that it had decided to open a judicial investigation on the same counts.

Shortly after midnight, in Vénissieux, a town located in the metropolis of Lyon, “four night patrol police officers spotted a vehicle parked in the Carrefour parking lot” of the city and “reported stolen”said the prosecution.

As the police were preparing to check him, the driver of the vehicle engaged reverse gear and then forward gear, hitting a police officer. The latter was thrown onto the bonnet of the vehicle, which continued to progress. Two police officers, including the one positioned on the hood, then used their weapon several times. The vehicle ended its race a hundred meters further, added the prosecution.

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A policeman slightly injured in the legs

The police discovered two very seriously injured men in the passenger compartment of the vehicle and provided them with first aid.

The firefighters, present quickly on the spot, found the death of the passenger, while the driver was transported to the hospital in state of“absolute urgency”, according to the prosecution. He is currently brain dead, according to a police source. The police officer struck, slightly injured in the legs, was also referred to the hospital.

Aged 26 and from the Annecy region, the driver was known to the police. His criminal record shows nine convictions and he is being searched for “aggravated theft” of vehicles, according to the prosecution. The passenger, a 20-year-old Lyonnais, was also known to the police, but his criminal record does not mention any conviction, said the prosecution.

Two sections of the CRS8, an elite unit of the national police, forty men, must arrive as reinforcements in Vénissieux on Friday evening, according to the police.

Two investigations have been opened, the prosecution said. The first, entrusted to the departmental security, concerns the “receiving theft”the “aggravated refusal to comply” and the “violence with a weapon against law enforcement officers”. The second, for “violence with a weapon by persons holding public authority resulting in death without the intention of giving it”was entrusted to the IGPN.

Darmanin’s “a priori support”

On a visit to Corsica, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, brought his “upfront support” at “all the police and gendarmes of France who face refusals to comply every day since there is one every half hour in our country”. According to him, there was in Vénissieux “a clearly clear aggression against these police officers who were doing this check” and “so they opened fire”.

“We have for many years (…), more and more refusal to comply (…). The law has been amended to strengthen the powers of police and gendarmes and convict these people. I don’t doubt the work of the police.”he also said.

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Out of 14,240 refusals to comply recorded in 2021, 157 resulted in “use of firearms on moving vehicles”according to figures given by the spokesperson for the national police, Sonia Fibleuil, on Europe 1 in June, after a case that occurred in Paris.

For Nicolas Bujdo, deputy departmental secretary of the Alliance-National Police union, “the colleagues go to control a stolen vehicle, which starts, and they fire back. They shot to save their lives.”he told Agence France-Presse.

The Defender of Rights decided at the end of June to automatically take up three cases concerning four deaths that occurred in the context of “refusal to comply” : a motorist, March 26 in Sevran (Seine-Saint-Denis); two men in a car, on April 24 on the Pont-Neuf, in Paris; and the passenger of a vehicle in the 18^e district of the capital, June 4.

The World with AFP