news of the week

Dear readers,

Eric Comyn was a police officer with an exemplary career. Married and father of two children aged 12 and 16, this 54-year-old soldier had been engaged for over thirty years as a non-commissioned officer in the gendarmerie. He had been working in the Mandelieu-la-Napoule motorized platoon since 2007.

His life was unjustly ended when he refused to comply. The images are of incredible violence. We see the policeman hit head-on by a black sedan. The warrant officer is thrown several meters before crashing to the ground. The driver, however, continues his journey without slowing down.

The suspect? Louis Antonio Mendez Vaz, a 39-year-old Cape Verdean with a lengthy criminal record. He had already been convicted ten times – no less – by the courts: six times for traffic offences, including drunk driving and driving under the influence of drugs, and four times for personal injury. He was charged with “murder of a person in authority”.

During a tribute ceremony for Warrant Officer Éric Comyn, his widow, Harmonie Comyn, delivered a poignant indictment in which she pointed out the laxity of French justice. “I say it loud and clear, France killed my husband”said the non-commissioned officer’s wife in front of uniformed gendarmes and elected officials gathered together. “By its inadequacy, its laxity and its excess of tolerance. France killed my husband.”she hammered out in a muffled voice. “How, why can this repeat offender evolve in complete freedom?”

OUR ARTICLE ON THE SUSPECT’S PROFILE

In other news stories…

• In Vallauris, a 7-year-old girl mowed down by a motorcyclist

A 7-year-old girl was hit by a motorcyclist who was doing a wheelie on Thursday evening in Vallauris (Alpes-Maritimes). She is currently between life and death. The 19-year-old motorcyclist who hit the girl was indicted and placed under judicial supervision on Saturday evening. The Grasse public prosecutor’s office and the investigating judge had requested that the suspect be placed in provisional detention, but the judge of liberties and detention decided to place the person concerned under judicial supervision with a certain number of obligations to be respected.

The father of little Kamilya expressed his anger after this court decision. “Thank you French justice. From tomorrow, citizens who have not been arrested (sic) in the act know that they can drive as they (sic) want, act crazy on the road. Kill. No respect for our daughter or for ourselves”he wrote on his Facebook account on Sunday.

FIND OUR REPORT

• Attack on the synagogue in La Grande-Motte: the suspect’s deep-rooted anti-Semitism

The man suspected of attacking a synagogue in Montpellier (Hérault) on Saturday, August 24, had told several people of his wish to go and fight in Gaza. In front of investigators, this 33-year-old Algerian denied any intention of homicide but admitted that he had intended to scare. According to the national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office (PNAT), the suspect “has become radicalized in the practice of his religion for several months and has also harbored a long-standing hatred of Jews, more specifically focused on the situation in Palestine.”

FIND OUR ARTICLE ON HIS PROFILE

• Young woman sexually assaulted while jogging

A 24-year-old woman who was jogging was sexually assaulted on Thursday, August 29 in Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines). Her attacker came up behind her on a bike before following her and violently grabbing her buttocks. While the victim, very shocked, was in tears, the individual fled “laughing”.

The suspect’s name is Kalilou N. At just 18 years old, he was already known to the courts for theft, breaking into a school and drug cases. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years.

FIND OUR ARTICLE

The story

On Monday, September 2, around fifty men will appear before the Vaucluse criminal court for having raped a septuagenarian offered by her husband, Dominique P. On the forum “Without his knowledge” from the online chat site Coco.fr, the latter offered Internet users “to offer the sleeping one”. Every night, he drugged his wife to serve her to strangers in a small room in the marital home. Most of the accused lived only a few kilometers away. The youngest is 26 years old, the oldest 74.

FIND OUR STORY

Yesterday’s fact

On August 30, 1984, sub-brigadier Claude Schaeffer was shot by a thug after a trivial altercation in Auxerre. His colleague was seriously injured. It was too much for the police officers, one of whom had been shot dead a month earlier in Marseille after a robbery. The case “constitutes the second serious test for the policy of the Minister of the Interior, Pierre Joxe, in favour of the police», note The Figaro in its September 2 edition.

The profile of the killer, Abdelhamid Hakkar, a repeat offender who had benefited from a reduced sentence, revolted the police, who demanded harsher sentences for the killers of law enforcement officers. Hakkar was sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent 27 years behind bars, filing numerous appeals all the way to the ECHR. When he was released from prison in 2012, he was one of the longest-serving prisoners in France. He made headlines again in January 2024 after running over a teacher with his car.

By our journalist Camille Lestienne.

On the agenda

Monday September 2nd : trial before the criminal court of Avignon of Dominique P. and 50 people for the rape of his wife. The hearing is scheduled to last until December 13.

Wednesday September 4th : trial before the Lille criminal court of the three people responsible for an integration evening after the death of a medical student

To read

In “Cartels, a journey to the land of Narcos”, journalist Frédéric Saliba, correspondent in Mexico for the newspaper The Worldimmerses the reader in the ultraviolence of the drug cartels. After his election at the end of 2006, Felipe Calderón, the new Mexican president, declared war on the drug cartels. The mafias clashed, among themselves and against the authorities, with machine guns and anti-tank rocket launchers. Frédéric Saliba found himself covering these chilling crimes, the lucrative drug market, its killers, its victims, its political collusion, its narco-culture… Militarization exacerbated a conflict that would cause, between 2006 and 2024, more than 450,000 deaths and 70,000 missing. The book is scheduled for release on September 4.

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Have a good week everyone!

Guillaume Poingt, crime reporter at Figaro.