The suspect was armed with a rifle and a katana (Japanese sword) when the gendarmes, present on the spot since Tuesday evening, intervened with the reinforcement of the GIGN, specified a source close to the file to AFP.
“The negotiators tried to get in touch with him all night, in vain, and the assault was launched in the morning,” the source said.
Five people, members of a blended family of which the perpetrator was a part, were found dead in the house. The details of the family ties are not yet established with certainty.
Asked by AFP, the Bourg-en-Bresse prosecutor’s office did not wish to comment on the case at this stage. He should publish a press release at the end of the afternoon.
According to Christian Limousin, mayor of Dover, a small neighboring town of Ambérieu-en-Bugey, this family had lived in the house since July 2020 and “began to invest in the village”.
An acquaintance of the family indicated on the spot that the author of the slaughter was 22 years old and worked in a sign of fast food in a nearby town.
“This morning at 8:30 a.m., the gendarmes asked me not to open my bar,” Tania, a 30-year-old who has run the village cafe since March, told AFP. “The mother of one of the victims called me to tell me that she hadn’t been able to reach her daughter since yesterday,” added the shopkeeper.
A large security perimeter has been erected around the center of this village of a thousand inhabitants, the main accesses to which have been cordoned off.
A hundred gendarmes, including envoys from the Ain group, the GIGN branch, and criminal investigation technicians were on the scene.
This drama is one of the deadliest family killings in France in recent years. In October 2020, a father killed his wife, two children and two nephews in Noisy-le-Sec (Seine-Saint-Denis).
