The Quimper court on Thursday sentenced to six months in prison two owners of horses who had arrested and threatened with weapons at the end of August, on a road in Finistère, two motorists whom they suspected of wanting to attack their animals .
Read also: Mutilated horses: for owners, the temptation of vendetta
The two women, a mother and her daughter, aged 51 and 23, respectively at the material time, were tried in an appearance on prior conviction (CRPC) for "
violence with a weapon in assembly. without incapacity
”and“
interference in a public service
”.
They were also prohibited from carrying a weapon for three years.
Armed with a coupe-coupe and a pellet gun, they had checked during the night of August 29 to 30 on a country road near Rosporden, in the center of Finistère, two young women returning to their home after their working day.
Regularly taking the same route, the vehicle of the two motorists had been the subject of a report on social networks, while cases of abuse of equines were increasing in France, triggering a real psychosis.
At the beginning of December, the gendarmerie had identified a total of nearly 500 acts of mutilation of horses in 2020, according to a source familiar with the matter.
But in only 16% of cases human action has been established, three quarters of cases being of natural origin, according to the same source.
Figures which have seriously weakened the hypothesis of a vast criminal phenomenon.
