On the Côte d’Azur, it was the driver of a stolen vehicle, of Tunisian nationality, who lost his life, after being spotted, around 4:30 p.m., by a road safety brigade, in the process of “zigzagging dangerously” on the Mathis lane, the expressway that bypasses Nice, according to the Departmental Directorate of Public Security.
The police signaled the driver to follow them, but the vehicle accelerated and took an exit lane. “Stuck in the flow of traffic”, the fleeing vehicle would then have turned around to find itself facing the police car, which it would have struck “several times”, still according to the DDSP.
One of the police officers, down on the road, then fired “once”, according to another police source. The driver, despite attempts at resuscitation, died at the scene.
The driver “is a Tunisian in his thirties, living in our region for a year,” Anthony Borré, 1st deputy mayor of Nice, told AFP. “He was driving without a license on board a stolen vehicle registered in the Var”, added the elected official.
The passenger in the vehicle, also in his thirties, whose nationality was not specified, was arrested.
The two police officers, slightly injured in the collision between the two vehicles, were taken to hospital.
Two investigations have been opened by the Nice prosecutor’s office, deputy prosecutor Maud Marty told AFP: a first, entrusted to the Departmental Security, for attempted homicide on a person holding public authority: a second, by the IGPN, the police force, for manslaughter by the police officer who fired the shot.
In a tweet, the mayor of Nice said he gave his “full support to the agents” of the national police of the Alpes-Maritimes, “in the face of a driver who deliberately ran into them”. According to Christian Estrosi, “refusals to comply are a crime and are increasing” and Nice municipal police have thus been confronted with “two particularly violent refusals to comply” during the past 24 hours.
– Killed by ricochet –
This new case comes just hours after a 22-year-old woman was killed and a 26-year-old man injured in Rennes, again by a single shot from a police officer, during an interception carried out as part of of an anti-drug operation.
Around 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, a police officer reportedly used his service weapon “once” while colleagues from the Rennes judicial police and the Nantes Research and Intervention Brigade (BRI) were carrying out the investigation. interception of a vehicle “in the context of an investigation for an offense against the narcotics legislation”, indicated the prosecutor of Rennes Philippe Astruc.
The driver of the vehicle, known to the police for drug trafficking, was shot in the arm. Arrested and placed in police custody, the man was briefly examined at the hospital for his injury and had already been released on Wednesday morning.
Hit by ricochet, his passenger is however deceased. Resident in Rouen and unknown to the judicial services, the young woman, companion of the driver, died, despite the intervention of the emergency services at 2:15 a.m., on an exit ramp from the Rennes ring road.
According to Yoann Leandri, deputy regional secretary for the western zone of the Unsa Police union, “the offender came deliberately to hit the police device by using the vehicle at very high speed as a weapon by destination”.
In addition to the initial procedure for drug trafficking, two investigations have also been opened on this case: one by the IGPN, for intentional violence resulting in death without the intention of giving it, another by the judicial police of Rennes, for attempted murder of a person holding public authority.
Of 14,240 refusals to comply recorded last year by the national police, 157 cases concern “use of firearms on moving vehicles”, according to police figures.
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