Four people were indicted on Friday for having taken the law into their own hands at the end of July in Pont-Saint-Esprit (Gard) by having pursued and then shot dead a burglar caught in the act, announced the Nîmes prosecutor's office.
Investigators found their trace after identifying the victim's body, discovered in a state of decomposition on August 28 near a railway track in this town of around 10,000 inhabitants.
Three men aged 36 to 38 and a woman aged 24 were arrested on Wednesday.
According to the first elements of the investigation, on the night of July 30, the owner of a house in Pont-Saint-Esprit, “who had just caught two individuals in the act of burglary and put two individuals on the run, decided to try to find them with the help of two friends and his partner,” the Nîmes prosecutor’s office said in a press release.
“It was during this pursuit that the victim, aged 46 and known to the courts for aggravated theft, was shot several times. The second individual, very slightly injured, managed to escape.”
Three of those indicted were placed in pre-trial detention and one of the accomplices under judicial supervision. One is being prosecuted for murder and the three others for complicity in murder. All face 30 years of criminal imprisonment, underlined the prosecution.
