Indre-et-Loire Assize Court
“You can't put this label on me, I don't want to accept it. [Cette nuit-là]I took out a knife to impress but I didn't intend to kill. »
Three years after the death of Zinedine Guerraoui, stabbed with a blade on Christmas night 2021 in La Riche, the words of Praisy N., accused of the murder, were eagerly awaited.
They resonated before the Indre-et-Loire Assize Court, Monday November 25, 2024, at the opening of the hearing aimed at trying the young man aged 23. But they remain draped in an unsatisfactory veil for the relatives of the missing who have come to obtain answers.
“Fast, fluid, powerful… Everything to kill”
Because, faced with the words escaping from the box, the seriousness of the injuries inflicted and the description of the actions – of rare violence – seem to serve another story. “He was merciless: for me, he knew what he was doing”Zidan, his lifelong friend, came to testify, recounting emotional memories of the cold findings of the police investigation.
Seven wounds, four of which were fatal, some 17 cm deep, are listed in the autopsy report. So many illustrations of stabbings “fast, fluid, powerful… Anything to kill someone”, says Alexandre, without concession. He too witnessed the scene from the deceased's Volkswagen Polo, under the roof of which the trio celebrated in their own way. In a soulless parking lot in the Niqueux city, “in quiet mode”one of them will whisper.
Zinedine Guerraoui's heart, lung, liver and spleen were hit during an altercation, the motive of which is still difficult to understand. “There was no dispute between the two of them, “Croesus” came out of nowhere, he was severely drunk”say the two witnesses.
The desire to kill at the center of the case
In front of a packed room, despite the thirty-five months which separate these lines from the facts judged, the first day of the trial propelled the assembly into the heart of the deadly scene, sequence by sequence.
In this melee, Zinedine Guerraoui “did not have time to defend himself or ward off the blows”summarizes divisional commander F. At the helm, the director of investigation was surgical. Questioned about the desire to kill which punctuates this file, the officer summoned the “obvious determination” et “the multiplicity of stab wounds” carried by the accused to outline an a priori unambiguous response.
A projection brought to the defense whose purpose remains to evacuate the homicidal intention.
Yesterday, the study of the personality of “Croesus” was valuable in that, in the face of monstrous acts, it restored to the accused his humanity. We remember the journey of a teenager uprooted from his native Congo, raised by a single father. A delinquent without a criminal record until now, stuck in his addiction to alcohol.
His interrogation, scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday November 26, 2024, will be closely watched. It will, perhaps, allow us to better understand what was going on in his head on Christmas night 2021.
