With a mysterious accomplice, he would have seized 120,000 euros of watches and jewelry at Pierre Ménès' Yvelines home. A 22-year-old young man was sentenced on Monday by the Versailles Criminal Court to 21 months in prison for having robbed the sports journalist's house in Beynes on September 29.
It was around 3 p.m. that afternoon when the two thieves arrived in a car at the home of the journalist and his wife Mélissa. They force the gate and move pallets that hinder the passage, then try to break a window. They do not succeed and finally force it with a screwdriver. They enter the house, search it and get their hands on jewelry, rings set with precious stones and luxury watches valued at almost 120,000 euros.
The gendarmes made 22 fingerprint surveys and discovered three positive traces on the gate, the pallets and a smartphone window that the thieves dropped. This allows them to identify a suspect. As an employee - undeclared - as a meal delivery man, Rida is already known to the police and the justice system for theft and refusal to comply. The young man, who lives with his parents in Paris, in the 15th arrondissement, was arrested on Sunday evening.
"It was an acquaintance who offered me 500 euros to drive him on a plane. I accepted, he tells the bar. I waited for him in the car. I got closer and we ran away because of the dogs. I touched the door and the pallet to put everything back in place. We returned to Paris and I received my 500 euros ”. Rida will not say more about this possible accomplice, because "he is afraid of suffering reprisals in his neighborhood".
A pass encoding machine to open landing doors
The prosecutor, who judges this version “not very convincing”, asks him “if he does not have the impression of having been tricked by touching 500 € on a booty of 120,000 euros”. But the young man, who landed a BTS and is studying languages, as recalled by his lawyer, Me Jean-Baptiste Colombani, does not react.
Rida was imprisoned after the trial. The judges attached their conviction to a ban on visiting the Yvelines for a period of five years.
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And he's not done with justice. He has yet to appear before the Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) criminal court for another burglary case. During his arrest, the gendarmes also discovered at his home a machine to encode the passes to open the landing doors. The investigators make a comparison with the burglaries of PSG players, because the address of the sports columnist had been found during investigations on this band of thieves targeting only personalities.