The main suspect, aged 26, admitted to being the author of the shooting targeting the family, “while denying having deliberately hit the victim”, fatally shot in the abdomen, Annecy prosecutor Line Bonnet said on Saturday in a statement. The victim, a 40-year-old woman who was seven months pregnant, was “hit by a projectile while she went out to see the damage” after the mobile home where she was staying with her husband and two teenage daughters was attacked. the target of “several gunshots” on February 22, in Chênex (Haute-Savoie), not far from the Swiss border.
A second man, aged 30 and indicted for the same facts, admitted “having left the shooter with his rifle at the scene of the crime” and then picking him up. The two accomplices also admitted to having fired shots two days earlier, on February 20, at several caravans in a Traveler reception area in Viry, a few kilometers away, where several families were located. Several caravans were hit but there were no injuries, according to the Annecy prosecutor’s office. Both were remanded in custody on Friday.
A few days after the tragedy, the association “La Voix des Roms” indicated on its website that it had “filed a complaint for racist assassination”, expressing concern about a “multiplication of anti-Gypsy comments and acts for several months, even several years”. “Anti-Gypsyism killed in Chênex”, underlined its publication, calling on the justice system to act.
For years, strong tensions have opposed the local population and travelers in Haute-Savoie and particularly in the Genevois region, where the village of Chênex is located: at the heart of the debate, the lack of travel areas, denounced by on the one hand, and illegal installations on illicit sites, on the other, accompanied by accusations of endangering public tranquility and security.
