“If I hadn’t jumped, she would have crushed me”: a woman tried after the attack on a mayor of a commune in Haute-Loire

A 51-year-old woman, psychologically drifting, was summoned to the criminal court on Thursday, November 14, for committing violence against the mayor of Solignac-sur-Loire. The case was adjourned.

Since the beginning of the summer, the parishioners of Solignac-sur-Loire have been surprised to see decorative objects disappear from their church. Synthetic flowers, placemats and soliflores were regularly missing from the inventory. There was nothing to cry out for, these effects having little commercial value and being devoid of any religious symbolism. However, there was no question of letting the thing continue. So the town carried out its little investigation, until it identified a fifty-year-old woman residing in a neighboring town.
The matter reached the ears of the mayor and one day in September, the elected official took advantage of passing the person concerned at the wheel of his car to go and speak to her. The woman would have stopped her vehicle before opening her door and the elected official would then have leaned down to her level. “She backed off, I didn’t understand. But if I hadn't jumped, she would have crushed me,” says Olivier Teyssier, contacted by telephone. The councilor did not become a civil party “out of compassion for this woman”.
The gendarmes went to her house on September 12 to question her about this attack. She was taken into police custody, then imprisoned to serve a 4-month prison sentence, handed down against her in connection with another case. But his psychological state convinced the judge of freedoms and detention to request hospitalization under duress in Sainte-Marie on October 24.
The defendant, aged 51, was summoned to court on Thursday afternoon. She had difficulty separating from the nurse who had accompanied her since the beginning of the hearing. When his name was called by the president of the court, it took the support of his lawyer to find the courage to step up to the stand. “The question of discernment arises. I am requesting a psychiatric assessment,” immediately indicated Mr. Nicolas Ogier, his counsel. The public prosecutor did not oppose this request. The case was adjourned. She will be judged on Monday December 16.