He had never used his weapon in an operational setting.
The first and only time ended in tragedy – the death of a young father – and a turning point in the life and career of this elite gendarme.
This ex-member of the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Group) from Reims (Marne), who killed a 23-year-old man from the gypsy community, Henri Lenfant, with a bullet to the back of the head during of a nighttime arrest operation in 2018 near Lens, appears before the Pas-de-Calais criminal court from this Monday.
Under judicial supervision and kept away from the field since, Alexandre B., 44, is accused of “intentional violence leading to death without intention of causing it”.
Qualification that satisfies no one.
Neither the accused, who believes he acted in “an instinct for survival”, and whose lawyer, Me Sébastien Busy, will plead for acquittal;
nor the victim's family, who would have wanted the gendarme to be tried for intentional homicide, and who "would not understand why he is not sentenced to prison, it is human", confides Me Alban Deberdt, the lawyer for the parents and a brother of Henri Lenfant, a scrap dealer who was fatally injured while driving a BMW in a vacant lot, on September 28, 2018 in Fouquières-lez-Lens.
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