The scene is incredibly violent, astounding in its suddenness.
It was filmed on the evening of November 2, 2017 by the video surveillance of Carrefour City on rue Saint-Guilhem, in the center of Montpellier (Hérault).
Under the cold and clinical eye of the camera, a man suddenly appears in the frame, runs towards two people in the street, grabs one of them and stabs her violently in the chest before fleeing.
It is exactly 9:52 pm and 58 seconds, Joaquim Tougeron, 20, collapses, his heart fatally pierced.
He was declared dead by the emergency services at 10:30 p.m.
How did we come to such a drama?
This will be the subject of the debates which start this Monday before the Assize Court of Montpellier.
Mohammed Guendouz is tried there for assassination.
This is the thesis of the prosecution: this man now 32 years old premeditated his gesture.
He denies, assures that he was only defending himself following an altercation with the victim.
Everything was tied in ten minutes.
Before the events, Joaquim Tougeron and Mohammed Guendouz did not know each other.
The 20-year-old geography student has just moved to the neighborhood for his studies.
Life promises to be happy for him.
That night he wanted to show his girlfriend his apartment.
At Carrefour City, an argument breaks out between the two who are described "as madly in love" by their relatives.
One of the blows hits the heart
Mohammed Guendouz, who lives in the neighborhood, intervenes, the tone rises between the two men.
Guendouz claims that the student hit him first, which the video where he is seen punching Joaquim with an object seems to contradict.
Several witnesses try to separate them and finally each leaves on his own.
Ten minutes later, Mohammed Guendouz appears in the street where Joaquim had asked a passer-by to use his phone to call his girlfriend, and he stabs the student twice before running away.
One of the two blows is struck with such violence that it pierces Joaquim's chest and reaches his heart.
The investigation is rapid: the investigations establish that Mohammed Guendouz returned briefly to his home after the altercation, before coming out immediately to go, without shoes, to the Carrefour City which has just closed.
He throws himself against the doors, then starts running and catches up with Joaquim.
Guendouz claims that he stabbed the young man because he had just assaulted him.
A version completely denied by the video but also by the various testimonies.
Despite these overwhelming elements, the murderer remained in his position.
For the prosecution, Guendouz premeditated his action, went back to his apartment to take a knife, and deliberately attacked the young man.
Already several convictions for knife attacks
"The family is devastated, the trial will be a difficult moment for her," explains Luc Abratkiewicz, who defends Joaquim's relatives.
They have the courage to come and testify for their child, and also to understand how the one who killed him could have come to this.
At the time of the facts, Mohammed Guendouz was not unknown to the courts.
His record shows six convictions between 2010 and 2015, several for knife attacks.
A time indicted for attempted murder in Hauts-de-Seine, he was finally sentenced to two years in prison for violence with weapons.
In Montpellier, he was also sentenced in 2015 for having stabbed two people in the street.
There again, despite elements of video surveillance, he had denied being in possession of a weapon and claimed that it was he who had been assaulted.
Psychological expertise describes a man "irritable, impulsive".
“A violence that is out of his control, which makes him dangerous for others.
"
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Should this instability have required more stringent sentences during the last convictions of Mohammed Guendouz?
That will certainly be one of the questions at this trial.
At the time, he had been described as "a time bomb" and his neighbors feared him.
One of them even told investigators that he had been stabbed by Mohammed Guendouz.
But he hadn't filed a complaint.
A painful memory in the city
Maître Jacques Martin, lawyer with a long criminal career and former president of the bar, agreed to urgently resume the defense of the alleged murderer.
There is obviously no question for him of denying the stab wounds.
“It will also be the trial of indifference, and ruptures, those that have marked the course of Mr. Guendouz.
He was forced by his family to come to France from the Aurès in Algeria, it was the tragedy of his life.
He did not speak French when he arrived.
Yet he had managed to start a family, have a child before being rejected.
Another break, ”says the lawyer.
In Montpellier, the hearing should revive a painful memory in the city, where the incomprehensible death of a young student had shocked the population and provoked rallies in his memory.
