"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us poor sinners now and at the hour of our death."
This Thursday, the words rise in the silent audience hall.
Sitting opposite the president of the assize court, Guy Coponet, 92, prays and testifies at the same time, in a voice broken by emotion.
On this fourth day of the trial for the Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray attack, July 26, 2016, the parishioner recounts the moment when, between life and death, he saw help arrive:
"I finished my prayer to Mary when a door opened.”
After a brief sob, he concludes,
“It was about time they arrived.”
A few minutes earlier, this friend of Father Jacques Hamel, assassinated that day, had recounted that horrible July morning.
A moving testimony, striking by its sobriety, its intense emotion and its tears, its humor too,
"because you also have to laugh anyway"
.
Guy Coponet is the man who saw, he is even the man who, forced by Adel Kermiche, filmed the attack...
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