“If he hadn’t looked for me, nothing would have happened.” The manager of a 58-year-old Nice bar has been tried, since Monday, May 5, in front of the Assize Court of the Alpes-Maritimes for killing a client and poured his body in concrete in 2022.
A second man, a 38-year-old client, who appears free, is tried for “non-assistance to a person in danger” and “change in crime scene”, facts liable to five and three years in prison.
A kind of concrete sarcophagus
On February 6, in the evening, M’Hand Goumiri, who worked in an interim as an optical fiber technician, had left his apartment around midnight, leaving the television and the light of the lounge on and his phone connected to the charger. Then he no longer gave a sign of life.
Very quickly, the investigation carried out on the manager of the atrium, a Kabyle bar that the disappeared frequented, in the heart of Nice, a stone’s throw from the Promenade des Anglais. The two men were angry and, on the evening of his disappearance, the victim had called the manager four times.
In June 2022, a search in the bar revealed traces of blood in a PMU room at the bottom of the bar and in the cellar. Once the cellar is emptied, the investigators discovered a kind of concrete sarcophagus, which contained the mummified body of the disappeared. The investigation did not make it possible to establish the reasons for the dispute between the two men: according to the manager, this client harassed him and had already attacked it physically.
“I am not afraid of a boxer”
On the evening of the drama, the manager, tired of aggressive calls from the future victim, had gave the phone to a boxer customer at the bar by chance. Far from calming down, Mand Goumiri had launched “I am not afraid of a boxer”, and had come to fight. Customers testified to having attended exchanges of invective and blows between the victim and the boxer, then left when the two men went to wash a few traces of blood in the toilet.
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The manager, presented as subject to anger attacks and focused on alcohol, then went to the toilet, a pistol in hand. He put the man on the ground, kicked him and pistol in his head and smothered him by placing a foot on his throat. “If he hadn’t looked for me, nothing would have happened,” he told investigators.
The boxer had not intervened, attempting only a cardiac massage on the already dead man, before helping the manager to wall the body in the cellar. The verdict is expected on Wednesday evening or Friday.
