The Yonne Assize Court is looking into a third case, this Monday, June 17, 2024. That of the murder of David Brault in La Celle-Saint-Cyr, on April 24, 2021, as part of a neighborhood conflict . The accused, François Blin, faces 30 years of criminal imprisonment.
François Blin, 25, is on trial for “murder” by the Yonne Assize Court, from Monday June 17 to Wednesday June 19, 2024. The alleged facts date back to spring 2021. On the night of Friday April 23 to Saturday April 24 , around 2:30 a.m., road from Pinelle to La Celle Saint-Cyr, a neighborhood conflict turned into a tragedy.
The accused is suspected of having fired at least two shots from a weapon at his neighbor, David Brault, 33 years old. “It is a homicide by firearm, following a neighborhood dispute which went wrong”, in a case of “local crime”, explained Hugues de Phily, public prosecutor of Auxerre, the day of the facts.
Neighborhood dispute
The trial which will be held over three days will perhaps shed light on the exact circumstances of this tragedy which to this day still remain unclear. The day after the indictment of the accused, on April 27, 2021, a source close to the investigation put forward the hypothesis according to which “the victim would have come to attack the perpetrator with a wooden stake or a bar of iron”, before he responded with several gunshots. An element which had neither been confirmed nor denied by the prosecution at the time of the events.
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On the other hand, Hugues de Phily agreed that it was “a neighborhood dispute which had lasted for several weeks and that it intensified when the victim committed damage to the defendant’s vehicle.” .” The magistrate further specified “that there was no evidence to suggest that the facts took place against a background of narcotics”.
Premeditation ruled out
The investigation seems to have made it possible to rule out the notion of premeditation, initially retained. In fact, the judicial investigation had initially been opened for “assassination”. Finally, the investigating judge retained the qualification of “murder”. The penalty incurred is therefore not life imprisonment, but 30 years of criminal imprisonment.
According to the mayor at the time Yannick Villain, the victim, David Brault, 33, had “a partner”. The elected official interviewed a few days after the murder reported that it was “a blended family with several children”. Shortly before the tragedy, the first councilor had received in his office the accused and the victim for neighborhood problems, in two separate cases, which did not concern them mutually. “I received the accused in my office. It was in the fall of 2020, in September or October. He was causing problems for a neighbor, because he was driving his car on the exit from his land and This caused marks on the ground, especially in rainy weather. The neighbor in question even demanded that I build a sidewalk.
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In his memories, the mayor had to deal with “an extremely shy and reserved boy in [s]on office”, and “who didn’t seem like a brute”. In summary, he “never thought he could shoot someone”. Even if to this day, the young man , now 25 years old, is still presumed innocent.
As for the victim, David Brault, he “had moved to the town less than three years ago [avant les faits, ndlr]” according to the mayor who remembers having intervened at his home for the disturbance: “It was in the spring of 2020, at the start of the first confinement, for the baptism of one of the children.” The reiteration of the disturbance had led to a summons to the town hall, with “the presence of a major from the Villeneuve-sur-Yonne gendarmerie”. The meeting did not necessarily go well, with the thirty-year-old retorting that “he did what he wanted”. ‘after Yannick Villain.
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Thomas Ribierre
