The policeman taken into custody following the shooting death of a young man on Tuesday during a check in Neuville-en-Ferrain (North) was my in examthis Wednesday for “violence resulting in death without intention to give it”, we learned from his lawyer.
“The facts are materially recognized, but justified by what constitutes a cause of criminal irresponsibility: self-defence, which at this stage must still be supported by acts of investigation” but which “the first elements tend to demonstrate”, assured Me Dugast, confirming information from The voice of the North. The Lille prosecutor confirmed to AFP that she had requested the indictment for this qualification.
According to the account Tuesday of the prosecutor of Lille, Carole Etienne, a police crew wanted to control the “occupants of a vehicle equipped with false license plates” around 3 am in Neuville-en-Ferrain, a border town of Belgium, neighboring Tourcoing. The driver of the car, a 23-year-old young man from Roubaix, then started “abruptly in order to escape”, she explained.
An autopsy performed
“During the escape, a policeman managed to open the driver’s side door in order to extract the individual and used his weapon once. The driver of the vehicle died on the spot despite the intervention of the emergency services, ”she continued. The passenger of the vehicle was placed in police custody “for concealment of vehicle theft and complicity in refusing to comply”.
The conclusions of the autopsy of the victim “are compatible with the first elements of the investigation” but “will be supplemented by ballistic investigations”, specified the parquet floor in a press release Wednesday morning. “The victim was mortally wounded by a single shot at the level of the ribs on the left side,” he added.
According to a police source, this young man was “known for several heavy acts of narcotics and concealment”. He was to serve a six-month prison sentence following a “failure to carry out community service”, the “detention decision dating from June 2022”. In this new case of a person killed during a refusal to comply, the investigations were entrusted to the Zonal Directorate of the Judicial Police and to the IGPN, the “police of the police”.
Police officer’s first shot
“(The policeman) was hit [par le véhicule], there is a medical finding, he might have been crushed, ”insisted Me Dugast. “At the time of the attempted arrest, the vehicle was set in motion in an extremely violent way,” she said. “He is aware of the seriousness of what happened,” continued the lawyer, assuring that “it was the first time he shot, because he had no other way out”.
She describes a policeman with an “exemplary career” and “irreproachable service”, “very respected, very human, very supported”, having “no disciplinary incident to his credit”.
Out of 14,240 refusals to comply recorded in 2021 by the national police, 157 cases concern “use of firearms on moving vehicles”, according to police figures. Last June, the Defender of Rights decided to take up “ex officio” three cases concerning police officers who had used their weapon following refusing to comply.
These three files concern four people who died: a motorist on March 26 in Sevran, two men in a car on April 24 on the Pont-Neuf in Paris and a passenger in a vehicle in the 18th arrondissement of the capital on June 4.
Other cases have occurred more recently, such as mid-August, in Vénissieux, a sensitive town near Lyon, where police fired several times when checking a car reported stolen, killing two.