“If you were a widow, would you start your life again with me? » This question, Gilbert Ruelland would have asked his lover. It was six months before the 22 long riffle rifle shots. The first, which the 72-year-old man denies having carried, on July 29, 2021, touched his mistress's husband, also in his seventies, on the arm. The second would have left “by mistake”, on August 17, 2021, from a cornfield in Cambout, a rural commune of 450 inhabitants south of Loudéac, causing two new wounds to the victim, to the hip and forearm. .
Retired farmer and “attentive” family man, Gilbert Ruelland has been appearing, since Monday, November 4, 2024, before the Côtes-d’Armor Assize Court for attempted murder.
I didn't want to kill him, I shot to scare
The accused was not immediately worried by the police. It was the discovery of his DNA on an ear of corn from the Cambout field that first confused him. That of the rifle which had been used to shoot, deliberately hidden in the home of a relative of its owner, would end up triggering the confession. “I didn’t want to kill him, I shot to scare,” the Costa Rican told investigators. That August day, the victim was clearing brush on the family farm surrounded by her grandsons aged 8 and 5. It was the oldest who, seeing his grandfather bleeding, went to find his grandmother, shouting: “Grandpa has been shot again”. This time, it's hard to believe in a lost bullet; the wife had informed the police.
Breton dance and adultery
The investigation will uncover the adultery at the origin of the tragedy: Gilbert Ruelland and the victim's wife, who met at a local Breton dance class, were lovers for seven months. Their union took shape weekly in small country lanes, until she decided to put an end to this affair, in March 2021. Is this the reason which pushed the accused, who also had another mistress in the village, to shoot?
What I want to understand is how he could know that I would be there at that time
The septuagenarian is defended during these four days of trial by Me Thierry Fillion and Me Éric Tabard, two tenors of the bar. In pre-trial detention at the Saint-Malo remand center since his indictment in February 2022, his eight requests for release have all been refused.
“How could he know I would be there at that time? »
On the civil side, we find the woman, the victim of the shooting and their two children. They are accompanied by lawyers Me Katell Gueneuc and Me Bertrand Faure. The hearing is being held publicly despite their request for a closed session, made on grounds of family dignity and the noise the affair has made in the small town. “All criminal cases touch on privacy,” Mr. Fillion counters. The court is going in its direction.
At the end of the day, the victim, now 74 years old, took the stand. “What I want to understand is how he could have known that I would be there at that time,” the man raised several times in court. He is convinced that before pulling the trigger, the accused would have spent “long hours [le] to watch “.
