A suspect still wanted, the weapon was real but “demilitarized”… we take stock of the machine gun found at Nice station

The facts

This Thursday around 2 p.m., a traveler alerted a railway worker when weapons had been abandoned and crudely hidden in a false ceiling of the toilets on the right wing of Thiers station in Nice.

A security perimeter was immediately set up around the site of the discovery.

On site, the police found a machine gun and its magazine as well as a knuckleduster and three knives.

During the intervention of the police, SNCF traffic was not interrupted and the trains ran normally.

Real weapons

If any doubt remained after the discovery, a ballistics expert quickly concluded that the machine gun and its magazine were real and not fakea hypothesis considered as Halloween evening loomed.

According to our information, the weapon was, however, demilitarized. That is to say that it had been modified to become a collectible or decorative object, unusable.

A man still wanted

Criminal investigation technicians, equipped with white overalls, carried out lengthy and careful observations in search of papillary and genetic imprints.

No hypothesis is favored at this stage of the investigationspecifies the Nice prosecutor's office, which entrusted the investigations to the judicial police.

According to some elements collected on site, a man, still wanted Thursday evening, would have panicked at the sight of a patrol and allegedly tried to hastily hide his arsenal before fleeing on foot.