Clarissa Jean-Philippe is still the “partner” of her police colleague, 10 years later

TERRORISM – Ten years later, the memory is still intact. That of « cric crac » of the weapon preparing to fire. That of the gunshot and the weight that the deafening noise seems to bring down on his back. But also, and above all, that of a smiling, integrated colleague, who was just starting her career as a municipal police officer.

In an interview with HuffPost to see at the top of this articleJonathan Berdal, municipal police officer and colleague of Clarissa Jean-Philippe, pays a moving tribute to the one he still considers his “binomial”who was shot by Amedy Coulibaly on January 8, 2015.

That morning, the two police officers were called to an ordinary traffic accident in this town in Hauts-de-Seine, south of Paris. While they spoke with the people involved in the clash, a man hidden under a “big black down jacket” fired before fleeing. For the Jewish community of Montrouge, the terrorist was in fact going to the Yaguel Yaacov school, a few meters away, to commit a massacre which ultimately did not take place. The man only reappears the next day, during the hostage-taking at the Hyper Cacher at the Porte de Vincennes in Paris, where he left four people dead.

“She is with me, we work together”

From this tragedy, Jonathan Berdal, still a police officer in Montrouge, retained reflexes of vigilance. “I scan my eyes more”he confides, on patrol as in the theater or in the metro. Clarissa Jean-Philippe is never far away. “Every morning when I close my locker, she is with me. We work together »he explains, tears in his eyes and in his voice as he recalls his 26-year-old colleague, whose photo is installed in his offices. “She watches me, she gives me advice”he describes.

Always present at the annual commemoration organized in Montrouge, Jonathan Berdal also slips in, as a spectator, to those of the attacks of Charlie Hebdo or Hyper Cacher. As if he felt a community with everyone affected by these attacks. He also wanted to attend the 2020 and 2024 trials in their entirety. During the first, he was alongside Clarissa Jean-Philippe's mother, Marie-Louisa. The latter, very close to her daughter whom she “called every day”died in Martinique in November 2024.

This Wednesday, Jonathan Berdal will still be present at the official ceremony organized at the scene of the attack and chaired by the Head of State Emmanuel Macron. With an additional reason for pride for this special anniversary: ​​in the process, the municipal police headquarters will be renamed in homage to « on » Clarissa. A story “marked in the walls” so that “above all, we don’t forget it”.

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