Refusal to comply in Nice: what we know after the indictment of the police officer responsible for the fatal shooting

The policeman who fired the shot which caused the death of a 24-year-old motorist on Wednesday when he refused to comply in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes), was finally indicted for intentional violence on Friday, September 9. For their part, the relatives of the victim denounce a homicide. Here is what we know about this case. The course of events The facts took place on Wednesday around 4:30 p.m., when a car was spotted “zigzagging dangerously” on the expressway, according to the Departmental Directorate of Public Security. Police then try to intercept this vehicle “having adopted a dangerous behavior”, details a press release from the public prosecutor of Nice, Xavier Bonhomme. The driver of the vehicle refuses to stop, flees on avenue Henri-Matisse, before turning around and hitting “frontally the police vehicle which had chased him”. “After several warnings” asking the driver to get out of the vehicle, the passenger from the police team on the spot fired through the window once at the driver. This version of the facts is “corroborated by witnesses present on the spot”, affirms the prosecutor. Videos circulating on social media show the policeman using his weapon while the vehicle is stationary after having reversed a few meters to try to extricate himself from his confrontation with the police car. . The driver died at the scene after paramedics attempted to resuscitate him. FRANCE 2 The driver was already known to the police The driver was a 24-year-old young man driving without a license in a stolen vehicle. The victim had already been convicted, “in particular for acts of driving without a license, violation of the narcotics legislation and theft and concealment of theft”, specifies the prosecutor. He was accompanied by a passenger who was arrested and placed in police custody “on counts of attempted homicide of a person holding public authority, concealment of theft and refusal to comply”. This man is 26 years old. He is unknown to the police, but is in an irregular situation on French territory, according to the prosecutor. He will be presented to a magistrate for his indictment and the prosecutor requests his placement in pre-trial detention. The policeman indicted for “wilful violence with a weapon” The policeman who used his weapon has been indicted for “wilful violence with a weapon causing death without intention to give it” and was banned from carrying a weapon, announced the public prosecutor. Now placed under judicial control, this 23-year-old policeman, assistant in a road safety brigade, had been placed in police custody as part of an open judicial investigation “to determine in a contradictory manner and under the authority of an investigating judge, the exact circumstances of the shooting”. For its part, the IGPN, the police force, was charged with an investigation for intentional homicide. The policeman’s lawyer, Laurent-Franck Lienard, reacted on Friday on franceinfo: “Our client is devastated by the tragedy that unfolded (…). He never wanted such a tragic outcome”, affirms- he. The police officer will “from now on submit to the legal procedure which is beginning and which will have to establish whether he has committed a fault or whether he is found in the legitimate exercise of his right”. The relatives of the victim denounce a “homicide” The scenario of the prosecution is rejected by the relatives of the victim, for whom “it is obvious that we have [affaire] to a homicide, there is no discussion about it”, had declared one of the family lawyers, Me Sefen Guez Guez. The reaction of the police officer “is clearly disproportionate”, had insisted this lawyer from the bar of Nice: “Regardless of the circumstances or the reality of his behavior previously, there was no danger of death that justifies killing this man in cold blood. Asked about the videos of the drama Thursday morning on franceinfo, the director general of the national police, Frédéric Veaux, spoke of the “weight and violence of certain images”. “In a case like this, it is the whole action that must be analyzed. What happened before, in the environment. The perception that the police may have had at the time of the intervention,” he insisted.