The suspect, who went to the Belfort police station at the beginning of the week to confess to being at the origin of the murder in rue d’Oslo in Belfort, was placed in pre-trial detention this Wednesday. It was the judge of freedoms and detentions who made this decision at the request of the Montbéliard prosecutor. During his 48 hours in police custody, this 44-year-old man was able to explain the reasons for his action, a sickle blow to the left calf, which was fatal to the victim. It all started from a dispute between people from the same building and surroundings last Saturday.
An altercation to protect other people
After the conclusions of the investigation carried out by the Belfort police and in the words of Paul-Edouard Lallois, the public prosecutor of Montbéliard, the victim is at the origin of this case. This 30-year-old man, regularly drunk, tends to seek conflict with people from his close or distant entourage. That day, under the influence of at least a little alcohol, he had a bit of an argument with one of his minor neighbors and threatened to come back with a knife. Suspicious, this young man called a family member who knows the victim well because he has distant family ties, to protect him.
Arriving on site, this 44-year-old man who will commit the murder goes to the cellar to take a kind of retractable sickle in case an argument reoccurs. Finally, the two protagonists come face to face at the bottom of the building and, according to testimony corroborated by surveillance camera videos, “an altercation breaks out” first verbal then physical.
In these videos, we can see the two men “grab” and the victim “take out a kitchen knife from under your clothes” – asserts the prosecutor – without attempting to hit or stab what will be his future executioner. In a few seconds the sickle strikes the left calf of the victim who then tries to pursue his attacker who is fleeing, but in vain. He collapsed while bleeding and died two hours later in hospital, of tibial artery hemorrhage.
During his hearing, the suspect claimed “not wanting to kill him” but only to neutralize it, in a way, he pleads self-defense. Argument not accepted for the moment by justice since the surveillance camera videos do not point in this direction. However, it will be discussed during his trial. In the meantime, the author of this sickle strike is also indicted for violence with a weapon resulting in death without intent to cause it.
