Mothers who came to pick up their children from the school in Saint-Florent-sur-Auzonnet, frightened witnesses, screams, tears. It was a scene of astonishing violence which occurred this Thursday late in the afternoon, at the end of classes at the only school in this village located 20 kilometers north of Alès.
Initially a mother wants to get her little girl back. Her ex-partner is also there. The couple is separated and the man has been wanted for some time by the judicial authorities regarding domestic violence. He must not approach his ex-partner. He did not hesitate to take out a knife and threaten the mother, according to Alès prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini. While the couple is arguing and witnesses observe this violence, the grandfather (the father of the threatened mother) who was waiting nearby in his car will get out of his car and shoot in the direction of his “ex son-in-law”. A bullet at eye level which will lodge in the gate of the school according to prosecutor Grini. “When the police arrived on the scene, the girl's grandfather, aged 68, was arrested and his weapon recovered.“, continues the magistrate. The author of the “violence” against his former partner had disappeared. He was arrested a little later by the military and placed in police custody, he is around thirty years old.
A flagrant investigation is opened under the authority of the Alès public prosecutor's office, it concerns violence aggravated with the use and threat of a weapon, namely a knife for the ex-partner. While the “grandfather”, author of the shooting, is implicated in this case qualified at this stage as attempted murder.
