A thirty-something was sentenced on appeal to ten years of criminal imprisonment for having killed his companion with an air rifle, a judicial source said on Wednesday.
The jurors of the Assize Court of Nancy recognized David Neuville, 31, "guilty of willful blow resulting in death without intention of giving it" while he appeared for "intentional homicide" in accordance with the requisitions of the lawyer General Hadrien Baron.
They were more lenient than the fifteen years of imprisonment claimed.
During the first trial in December 2019, before the assizes in Epinal, the Advocate General had requested the same requalification and required sixteen years of imprisonment.
This time, the jurors had followed the thesis of the defense, which had pleaded involuntary shooting, and imposed a sentence of three years in prison.
The general prosecutor's office had appealed.
An argument had broken out
The facts took place on August 26, 2017 in Rambervillers (Vosges) against a background of alcohol and drugs.
At the home of a friend where he had come for a fishing trip, the accused, a great lover of weapons, had brought his air rifle and was having fun shooting at targets.
In the afternoon, his companion had arrived, an argument had broken out between the couple, the young woman reproaching her companion, the youngest of a family of eight children, for "drinking too much" when the fatal shot had gone off. .
Affected in the lung, Laura Randour, 18, died shortly after.
David Neuville has always claimed that the shot was accidental.
First he explained that he shot into the wall and hit his partner by "ricochet".
He later explained that the shot was fired when he picked up the gun carelessly and had to pull the trigger unintentionally.
Passion for weapons
His host, the only person present, first placed under the status of assisted witness before being dismissed, saw nothing and was too drunk to remember.
The ballistics expert, he did not speak for one thesis or another.
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It is the versatility of the versions of the accused as well as his passion for weapons, which he was used to handling, which convinced the courts to send him back to the assizes.
