Initially, he said he borrowed the rifle to go “shoot coypu”. A 22 long rifle, more precise, for aiming from afar, than its starling rifle. The silencer? “Never used,” assures the accused. However, his fingerprints were found there. There was also this version from the septuagenarian according to which he went to Cambout, to the land of his lover's family farm, to “look for mushrooms”. However, this August 17, 2021, there are no more rodents than chanterelles in the cornfield where Gilbert Ruelland was stationed to shoot.
The victim will receive a bullet which will pass through his forearm before lodging in his hip. “I lost my footing,” the accused eventually admitted before the Côtes-d’Armor Assize Court, this Tuesday, November 5, 2024. “I wanted to scare,” he says. I parked the car at the edge of the small woods, took the rifle, some ammunition and headed towards the buildings across the field. » It is the second day of his trial and the former farmer still denies being the author of the first shot which hit the same victim in the arm, two weeks before the episode in the cornfield.
You were hurt because Madame didn't want to see you anymore, right? It must be said, Mr. Ruelland, we need answers
Adrenaline, guilt and then the trap
Gilbert Ruelland only recognizes what the evidence imposes on him as truth. “I shot down, just to show myself,” he says, for example, at court. “An expert explained to us that it was not possible given the trajectory of the bullet,” the president reminded him. She asks again: “Did you point the gun at the gentleman? » “Yes,” the accused finally responds. The interrogation is tedious, the man is not very talkative. His lawyer, Me Thierry Fillion, extracts a few words from him. “You were hurt because Madame didn't want to see you anymore, right? It must be said, Mr. Ruelland, we need answers. »
The accused still has excuses for the man he targeted. “What I did is unforgivable. » He also mentions, more clumsily, having made a “huge dumpling”. Earlier in the day, his ex-mistress came to tell the story of their affair. At court, she delivered the adrenaline, the guilt and then the trap: the man, having fallen in love, would have threatened to reveal everything about their romance if she left him.
It was the gendarmerie investigators who, after six months of investigation, telephone tapping and GPS tracking to shed light on these mysterious gunshots, ended up discovering the secret. The victim, an uneventful septuagenarian, former farmer and married father, did indeed have an enemy… but could not have suspected it.
