On October 13, 2018, a 34-year-old restaurateur from Wales, who had been living in Haute-Savoie for four years, was mountain biking on the edge of a wood when he was fatally shot by an accidental shot by a hunter who took part in a hunt in the town of Montriond.
The shooter's trial took place on Tuesday, two years after the fatal shot he swears accidental.
This implicated hunter was sentenced to four years in prison, including one year, according to the victim's lawyer.
The criminal court of Thonon-les-Bains combined this sentence with a ban on carrying a weapon for five years and canceled the hunting license of the accused who will no longer be able to hunt for ten years.
An attempt to cover up the facts
The gunman, aged 24 today, prosecuted for "manslaughter by willful violation of an obligation of safety or prudence", incurred five years of imprisonment and the public prosecutor had requested two.
This craftsman pruner without a criminal record had admitted his guilt just after the facts and expressed remorse.
He was appearing with three other hunters and the companion of one of them, suspected in particular of having tried to conceal the facts by modifying the hunt log and by installing, a posteriori, signs indicating the hunting party.
Suspended sentences of 6 to 18 months were pronounced against them, with two of them attached to a three-year probationary period with a ban on hunting and carrying a weapon.
Me Frédéric Noetinger-Berlioz, lawyer for the companion and father of the victim, both civil parties, described this judgment as "relatively balanced", considering "not abnormal that a hunter who takes the life of a person permanently, way to impose a custodial sentence ”.
An identifiable victim and perfect visibility
"Hunting was implicit in this file everywhere, but it was delinquent hunters who were tried and not hunting for which no safety rule was observed," said the council.
The victim, Mark Sutton, was the owner of two establishments, one offering a home chef service in Morzine, the other specializing in healthy cuisine in Les Gets, towns close to the scene of the tragedy.
On the day of the incident, he was wearing brightly colored clothes which made him "perfectly identifiable" and the area - a frequented, steep and difficult to access path, at an altitude of 1350 m - was uncovered, offering perfect visibility, according to the findings of the investigation.
The author of the shooting had said to have aimed a wild boar of a non-shooting shot, that is to say not aimed at the ground as it should.
