EThey aroused a wave of emotion and indignation. Three cases which deeply marked people's minds in Gironde will be judged before the Assize Court in Bordeaux in January, March and May 2025. Four years after the events.
1 The face slashed with stab wounds
Initially scheduled for December 2024, the trial of Mickaël Falou will be held for three days, from January 29 to 31. This 40-year-old man is accused of having murdered his former partner, Sandra Pla, on July 2, 2021, at her home, in the Saint-Augustin district, in Bordeaux. A crime punishable by life imprisonment.
The victim was 31 years old and the mother of a little girl she had with Mickaël Falou. The couple had been separated for several months. Sandra Pla had just obtained custody of their child.
Judicial information established that Mickaël Falou entered her home on July 2, in the middle of the night, hid in a garden shed for hours, waited for her to leave to drop off their little daughter at school. and surprised her on her return, pushing her inside the shop. Hearing screams, a neighbor called the police.
The young woman's body was discovered in the house. His face and neck larded with stab wounds. Around fifty wounds were noted. Mickaël Falou has always contested premeditation, claiming not to remember the violence.
Before this disastrous July 2, 2021, Sandra Pla had filed several complaints and complaints against her ex, for harassment. A few days before the crime, Mickaël Falou was placed in police custody and under judicial supervision. Sandra Pla's family initiated a state liability action, pointing to “failures and dysfunctions”.
2 Burned alive in the street
Such action was also taken by relatives of Chahinez Daoud, who died in atrocious circumstances in May 2021, in Mérignac. This second feminicide, which horrified the country and revealed numerous failings, will be examined by the Assize Court from March 24 to 28. Husband of the deceased, Mounir Boutaa, 47, is accused of murder. Here too, premeditation was found following the judicial investigation. Here again, the accused faces life imprisonment.
The facts date from May 4, 2021. At the end of the afternoon, as she left her home to pick up two of her three children from the social center, Chahinez Daoud, 31, was attacked in the street. The young woman was shot in the legs twice before being doused with gasoline and set on fire. Burned alive, she died on the spot, despite a neighbor's attempts to help.
Identified by witnesses, Mounir Boutaa was quickly arrested. During hearings, he maintained that he wanted to “punish” his wife, whom he suspected of having a lover, while denying that he wanted to kill her and denying that he had prepared his action. Psychiatric experts concluded that his discernment was impaired at the time of the events.
Already known to the courts before this crime, he was convicted of violence against his wife in June 2020. Chahinez Daoud had initiated divorce proceedings. A month and a half before her death, in March 2021, she had filed a new complaint against her husband after further violence. But this complaint was not handled as it should have been, inspections revealed. Several police officers were punished.
3 Killed against a backdrop of rivalries between neighborhoods
He had just turned 16 and found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. On January 2, 2021, Lionel Sess was shot and killed in his neighborhood, in Aubiers, in Bordeaux. The teenager was caught in a shooting with an automatic weapon. Four other people, including his best friend, were injured.
This drama takes place in a context of growing rivalries, at the time, between the Bordeaux districts of Aubiers and Saint-Louis. An escalation whose origin could be rap battles and of which Lionel was a collateral victim, the investigations having concluded that he was not targeted. According to the investigation, the target would have been a man aged around twenty, already injured by gunfire, on December 14, 2020.
Eight young people from the Saint-Louis district will be tried before the Gironde Assize Court for two weeks, from May 12 to 23. All are dismissed for “participation in a criminal association with a view to preparing a crime”. Three of them are accused of murder and attempted murder by an organized gang for the shooting of January 2, 2021 and two are prosecuted for the attempted murder of December 14.
