Still partly unexplained, the proliferation of cases of mutilated equines throughout France continues to worry many horse owners.
Brittany, where breeders and farmers are particularly numerous, is no exception to the rule.
So much so that the psychosis led a 53-year-old woman and her 23-year-old daughter to want to hunt down possible prowlers in an attempt to do justice themselves.
On the night of August 29 to 30, 2020, these two women, armed with a cutter and a pellet gun, carried out wild checks in the south of Finistère, in the town of Rosporden - a neighboring town de Bannalec, where, on the night of August 27 to 28, two animals were found mutilated.
Two motorists, returning from their work in Quimper, then found themselves stopped on the road and threatened by the two breeders as they returned to their home.
They had already been checked the day before by two individuals (who have not been identified).
Their license plate had thus been recorded and posted on social networks, probably explaining this second check by the two “vigilantes”.
A message of appeasement
Tried before the Criminal Court of Quimper this Thursday, January 14 within the framework of a CRPC (appearance on preliminary admission of guilt) for "violence with weapon in assembly without incapacity" and "interference in a public function", the two questioned could face up to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros.
They were finally sentenced to six months suspended prison sentence and a ban on carrying a weapon for a period of three years.
"It is not admissible that breeders under the emotion try to do justice themselves", had recalled, at the beginning of September, the new prefect of Finistère, Philippe Mahé.
Like the Quimper prosecutor's office, the latter wanted to convey a message of appeasement, and above all recall a prohibition as logical as it is formal as to the fact of replacing the police.
In Morbihan, a little further away, a special cell set up by the Lorient gendarmerie company, was set up last August, in order to reassure equine owners and to calm "an ambient psychosis" .
