If the motivations of the driver are not yet perfectly established, the homophobic motive is however completely excluded in the drama which took place very early on Wednesday in front of a night establishment, frequented by the gay and lesbian community. Several altercations with a group of young people would have led him to lose his calm in a heavily alcoholic context but he would not have wanted to kill them according to information from France Bleu Provence.
Placed in police custody shortly after the incident, the 20-year-old driver struggles to explain what happened to him. And his passenger, who was very drunk at the time of the incident, is probably not of much help in allowing the investigation to progress.
It nevertheless emerges from on-site investigations that an altercation broke out between the accused and a group of young people (some of whom, from the North, were on vacation in Toulon), because of the behavior of the first towards a young girl in the group. The bouncers would have preferred to put an end to it by removing one of the members of the group. The 20-year-old, however, came out on his own.
The vacationer was joined by his friends, and a second altercation allegedly broke out. In any case, witnesses indicate that he then returned to his car. While he was driving, he saw the group in a street which he took to join them, in the wrong direction and passed near the 7 or 8 people at excessive speed. One of the pedestrians was also apparently struck, without being injured, by the car’s rearview mirror.
Insults would then have flowed from the group, increasing tenfold the anger of the driver who then braked, then engaged reverse gear once again at very high speed, perhaps to explain himself once again. Part of the group then moved away, but two young men remained on the road and were hit. One, aged 25, did not survive. The second, also in his twenties, was very seriously affected, particularly in the face. The driver then fled with his passenger before being arrested very quickly afterwards. His passenger was also taken into custody a few hours later.
The prosecution quickly opened a judicial investigation for assassination and attempted assassination. The investigation was entrusted to the territorial crime division of the interdepartmental service of the Var national police.
The young man will be presented this Friday to an investigating judge with a view to his indictment. His placement in pre-trial detention leaves little doubt.
