Gusts fired at a café in Geneva: a miraculous employee

On March 17, 2024, at 4:10 a.m., the neighborhood of rue des Pâquis was suddenly awakened by metallic and chilling noises, shots fired at the front of Café Wilson by Dahlak. At the time, the Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a press release to say that a young man, suspected of being the shooter, had stolen, before this explosive episode, two submachine guns from a Geneva police car. .

The accused finds himself suspected of having used one of his weapons to commit these mysterious acts. Today, ten months after the events, the “Tribune de Genève” is able to reconstruct, in great detail, the alleged facts.

Who is this young detainee, accused in particular of theft, endangerment, damage to property? This is B., 21 years old, a Turkish asylum seeker who arrived in Switzerland in 2022. Placed in a home in Geneva, this Kurd, single and without children, does not take long to be noticed by the police who are intervened eight times due to his problematic behavior.

Convicted four times

Examples: a dispute with a waitress in a bar in Pâquis in March 2023, a knife attack against a compatriot at the Lagnon home two weeks later, threats and an extortion attempt against a bistro manager, a theft at the Cygnes shopping center in January 2024 and possession of a few bags of marijuana. Errors which earned him a ban, for twelve months, from entering the city center of Geneva from March 14, 2024, that is to say three days before the facts.

To date, the inmate has been convicted four times, notably for having threatened and wanted to blackmail this Geneva bistro owner who is none other than the manager of Café Wilson by Dahlak. The two men were therefore in conflict obviously over money.

He demands 40,000 francs from the bar owner

When questioned, the manager, also Turkish, confirmed that he had known the defendant since 2023. The latter regularly frequented his café. The bistro owner explains that he helped the suspect, in particular by giving him something to eat and drink. B. got along well with a fired bar employee. It was from this moment that the suspect allegedly demanded money for this dismissed employee but also for himself.

Amount required? 40,000 francs, declares the boss, specifying that this is in no case unpaid wages. The entrepreneur, also claiming that the defendant uses drugs, asked him to no longer come to his establishment.

A window of the police car half open

Banned from the city center since March 14, B. is suspected of having gone to the first floor of the Alpes underground car park the next day. On the video surveillance images, we see an individual enter the parking area around 10:30 p.m. He passes in front of cars and tries here and there to open them. Suddenly, he stopped in front of a police vehicle and noticed, according to our information, that the left rear window was not completely closed. A boon for the thief.

He enters the passenger compartment and stays there for 19 minutes. He leaves the parking lot for the first time at 10:12 p.m. Two hours later, he returns and slips into the vehicle for two minutes. He leaves to return to the scene two hours later. Did he have a backpack to carry the two submachine guns and two magazines of 30 rounds each contained in two saddlebags left empty in the Volvo? Did he hide all this arsenal in his jacket? You can’t tell from the images.

At 3:50 a.m., the man left the site for good. Probably with both weapons. In the images, we can clearly see the silhouette of a young man with a goatee and a hooded jacket. Twenty minutes later, a burst of bullets sprayed the front and interior of Café Wilson: the police report spoke of 15 projectiles fired, 13 of which penetrated the interior of the establishment. Police have surveillance camera video of the hooded shooter wearing a red checkered jacket.

“I thought I was in Vietnam”

Another worrying revelation: a Mauritanian, born in 1973, was inside the cafe. It was an employee who, after missing his bus to Meyrin, decided to sleep on a makeshift bed installed in the establishment. When questioned, the latter confirms having been lucky.

Shortly before the shooter passed, he moved to the basement because he was a little cold. A sign of his lucky star, he says, since shortly after, a burst of bullets transformed the café enclosure into a sieve: “I thought I was in Vietnam,” declares the employee heard by the prosecutor Emery in October. I got very little because I’m the one who manages the money for the PMU and the betting.”

The unfortunate man actually thought that he was going to see robbers coming to take over the establishment’s revenue. Hiding in the basement, trembling like a leaf and already seeing himself dying, the man then receives a phone call from his boss who advises him not to move while waiting for the police to arrive.

Abandoned weapon in a trash can

Once his crime is completed, the shooter runs to rue Jean-Jaquet and abandons one of the weapons in a trash container.

In front of the bistro, the police begin their investigation at full speed. On site and via their databases. A police officer, who had trouble with B. in 2023, says he recognizes him in a video surveillance image of the Alpes parking lot. The suspect was arrested on March 17 at 11:45 a.m. in his room at the Seymaz foyer. When they arrived, the police discovered that the resident had just shaved his hair. To not be recognizable? The investigation will tell.

“Gunshot residue” was found on the defendant’s clothes and body and his DNA was detected both in the police car and on the weapon abandoned in the trash can on rue Jean-Jaquet, notes a court ruling constraint measures. In any case, the latter, presumed innocent, contests the charges against him.

The second weapon on the criminal black market

During the hearing, he is asked if he knows where the second submachine gun is. In April, police learned that the weapon was being circulated on the black market in criminal circles. The prosecutor tells him that it is important to find it: “The French press mentioned the fact that it could have been used in the attack on a prison convoy on May 14, 2024 during which detention officers died .” A clear reference to the death of two guards killed in France at a toll in Eure, during the violent attack on their van which was transporting a detainee. The latter escaped.

But during this hearing in May, B. persisted in denying any involvement in the Pâquis affair. By analyzing the weapon found in the trash, investigators noted that there were still 14 bullets left in the magazine. A cartridge case was stuck in the ejection window: “This made it impossible to use the weapon, because the breech was mechanically blocked by the unextracted cartridge case,” said an April 8 report. It is likely that this incident stopped the shooting, because the user of the weapon did not know how to restore it to working order by carrying out charging movements after removing the magazine.

Contacted, M^e Vincent Cerutti, lawyer for the defendant, does not wish to comment. On this aspect the investigation is coming to an end and prosecutor Emery will then have to draw up his indictment to send the alleged shooter to trial.

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