His assault is a mystery.
On January 7, 2015, Romain jogged on the green belt, near Fontenay-aux-Roses (Hauts-de-Seine).
This is his favorite route, the one he runs several times a week.
At around 8:30 p.m., he noticed a man sitting on a bench, wearing a down jacket with a hood over his head.
Just after passing him, he feels a sharp pain in his arm and finds himself thrown to the ground.
“I didn't know what was going on.
I was like a fish out of water ”, explains this 38-year-old man, this Thursday, at the helm of the Special Assize Court which judges the attacks of January 2015. A presence in this forum that he must to the identity of the main suspect of his assault: Amedy Coulibaly.
But without ever that the involvement of the future assassin of Clarissa Jean-Philippe, on January 8, and of the Hyper Cacher, on the 9, could not be formally established.
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This first shot will be followed by four others which hit Romain in the knee, abdomen, thorax and buttock.
“Once on the ground, I turned around.
The guy was bent to point me directly, he mimes facing the courtyard.
I looked right away in his eyes.
Time has stood still.
I felt a hesitation and felt he had to finish the job.
I said to myself:
It's now or never, I have to run away.
"
The thirty-something with a slim and muscular figure manages to take refuge in a safe place.
In all, he spent nearly a year in hospital and still struggles, five years later, to move.
"Test" shots before taking action?
For the Hauts-de-Seine judicial police, this attempted homicide, which took place the day after the carnage at “Charlie Hebdo”, was not immediately terrorist.
"The victim had no reason to be targeted by such an act and the place was not symbolic either," says commissioner Michel Faury, the former boss of the service.
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But very quickly, the ballistics speaks.
The impacted cases discovered on the spot have the same marking as an ammunition found on the scene of the assassination of Clarissa Jean-Philippe in Montrouge.
And above all, the Tokarev pistol which was used in his assault will be found at the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes (Paris XII) with the only DNA of the hostage taker.
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For investigators, the Coulibaly lead appears to be the most credible.
And all the more so since the latter lived at the time in Fontenay-aux-Roses, a few hundred meters from the green belt.
And then, underlines one of the advocates general, the manager of the pizzeria of Gentilly (Val-de-Marne), where he buys two pizzas an hour later, describes a man wearing a tactical vest, with a heavily loaded backpack and gym bag.
The magistrate finally recalls that on the day of the events, Amedy Coulibaly received an email from his mysterious ordering party: “Do what you have to do today, but keep it simple, like that you go back to sleep and then you hide.
"It is perfectly compatible with what we have seen and the evening and the next day," admits Commissioner Faury, who however stumbles on the motive of such aggression.
"As it is a remilitarized weapon and therefore unreliable, the author may have wished to give it a try before taking action," he argues as a hypothesis.
"I'm 80% sure it's Amar Ramdani"
But if all the suspicions converge on Amedy Coulibaly, a major element weakens his questioning: the statements of the principal concerned.
As he did on several occasions during the investigation, Romain confirmed at the bar that his attacker was not black.
"Are you excluding it 100%?"
asks the president after returning to the charge several times.
"Yes, absolutely", he assures, annoyed and energized.
During the investigation, Romain in fact implicated Amar Ramdani, one of the defendants, after having recognized him in a photo in a television report, then on a photo board submitted by the investigating judge.
Thanks to the expertise of his phone, the investigators however excluded his presence on the green belt at the time of the facts and he was exonerated.
But Romain does not budge.
"I'm 80% sure it's him," he says at the helm.
"I have compassion for what happened to you," said Amar Ramdani to the jogger in front of him.
"But if he's 80% sure it's me, I'm 100% sure I didn't do that, that I never shot a human being," he swears since his box.
“When you are going through such difficult events and after five and a half years the person responsible has not been identified, how do you live? »Asks Me Daphné Pugliesi, Amar Ramdani's lawyer to Romain for the sake of appeasement. "We saw it badly, what do you want me to tell you else," breathes this former temporary worker who has never been able to return to work. We are not well. "
