The custody of the gendarme author on Friday of a fatal shooting at a truck driver who refused to comply was lifted Sunday afternoon, we learned from the prosecutor of Montauban.
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This 36-year-old adjutant was released after an extension of his police custody which began on Friday. Injured, the soldier is on sick leave, said the prosecutor of the Republic Laurent Czernik.
The investigation of the General Inspectorate of the National Gendarmerie (IGGN) for " violence by a person holding public authority resulting in death without intention of giving it " continues under the authority of the prosecution, underlined Mr. Czernik .
“ Experts ” from the vehicle department of the IRCGN (Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie) will have to reconstruct the unfolding of the events. This investigation must determine the circumstances in which the soldier used his weapon against this 35-year-old driver, who had just collided with a gendarmerie vehicle on the highway near Montauban, after having fled a traffic check.
According to the first observations the soldier fired four times including one fatal shot, an autopsy must be performed.
The driver, of French nationality, " lived a priori with his mother in Montauban " and was acting for a company based in Lot-et-Garonne, the prosecutor said on Saturday. He had been sentenced 7 times including 3 times for driving without insurance, it was specified. He had no more points on his driver's license but the zero balance had not yet been notified to him. He had also tested positive for cocaine.
Friday afternoon, this driver was the subject of a control while he was driving in the prohibited direction but he suddenly fled after the gendarmes had taken his license.
A chase ensued, first on a departmental then on the highway. The gendarmes tried to stop him several times with mini harrows. A first gendarmerie car was hit, a gendarme in another vehicle then decided to fire, said the prosecutor.
A second investigation concerning the refusal to comply and the endangering of the lives of the gendarmes was entrusted to the research section of the Toulouse gendarmerie.
This case comes after the death since early July of a police officer and a young gendarme, both killed by motorists refusing to obey the police.