Two people killed by police fire in 24 hours

Two dead motorists, killed by police in less than twenty-four hours, in Rennes and Nice: the toll on the consequences of refusing to comply continues to grow, against a backdrop of lively controversy over the use of firearms by the police.

In Nice, in the middle of the afternoon on Wednesday September 7, a Tunisian national in his thirties was shot dead while he was traveling in a car that had been declared stolen, after having been chased by a road safety brigade unit for driving dangerously on several busy roads in the city. Video footage posted on social media shows the car pulled into a driveway and blocked by a police vehicle, from which a thick plume of smoke escapes. On the driver’s side, an official in uniform points his gun at the window before firing again. The passenger in the car was arrested.

Read also: Refusal to comply, self-defense, hit and run: what does the law say?

Contacted by The worldthe prosecutor of Nice, Xavier Bonhomme, specifies that “Two investigations have been opened, one, entrusted to the departmental security, against the passenger of the vehicle who was placed in police custody on Wednesday evening and the second for intentional homicide entrusted to the IGPN [inspection générale de la police nationale]which targets the policeman who fired the shot”. The latter, specifies the magistrate, was “very affected psychologically and admitted to hospital before being placed in police custody”.

On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, another refusal to comply resulted in the death of the passenger in a Peugeot 208, after the shooting of an official from the research and intervention brigade (BRI) of Nantes, during an anti-narcotics operation. The 22-year-old woman was unknown to the judicial services. She died at 2:15 a.m., hit in the chest by the bullet which went through the right arm of the driver, a young man four years her senior, known to the police.

Hit in the legs

During his first hearing, the official who fired the shot said he opened fire after the Peugeot hit him in the legs as he tried to get out of his way. After one “situation” on the morning of September 7, a few hours after the events, the Rennes public prosecutor’s office opened two criminal proceedings, which are in addition to the investigation into drug trafficking: the first, for “willful violence with a weapon by a person in possession of of public authority having caused death without the intention of giving it”, was entrusted to the IGPN with the aim of determining the circumstances in which the BRI policeman was led to target the Peugeot; the second, for “attempted intentional homicide on a person holding public authority”, was entrusted to the criminal brigade of the judicial police of Rennes and targets the driver of the Peugeot.

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