By committing two offenses in quick succession, the 27-year-old homeless Niort resident was unable to avoid prison. For carrying an unauthorized weapon, but also and above all for having committed violence against his partner at the end of November 2024, he was sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment by the Niort criminal court, Monday December 2.
The man with the long record already knows the prison; he has spent half his time there in the last five years. But for the past year, he has been in a relationship with a young woman with whom he lives on the street. It is she who, on November 28, will file a complaint at the police station for “bites to the cheek, punches to the temple”, said the judge. “I was on medication and I had been drinking, it’s an explosive cocktailcontextualizes the defendant. I don't remember anything but if she says it, it's true.” explains the accused from the defendant’s box.
“Since she’s known him, it’s been a descent into hell”
The violence happened when he had just left police custody, “for carrying a weapon, after an altercation with the manager of Carrefour City in Niort”notes the judge, evoking a pruning knife, a cutter and a hammer, all in his bag. “I knew I didn’t have the right, but I didn’t want my partner to carry the bag”defends the person concerned.
For the blows dealt to the one he says “to love more than anything”, the former heroin addict tries to justify himself by evoking mutual violence. “ We were sometimes violent towards each other, but I would never incriminate my partner.” Overall, he recognizes the facts, but explains that he saw his partner change. “ I had rubbed off on her a little. »
This is also what the representative of the prosecution thinks. “He controls her actions and exercises control over her. It’s simple, since she’s known him, it’s been a descent into hell for her. » The prosecutor wants to be firm “ faced with his dangerousness, he who is already under probation”. The prosecution is demanding a sentence of eighteen months in prison against him as well as the revocation of his suspended sentence.
A detention sentence that Me Alexandra Meregoni, the defendant's lawyer, can hardly contest, because he does not have accommodation that would allow him, possibly, to adjust his sentence. Rather, she wants to emphasize “the good contact he had with a lady from the prison integration and probation service (Spip), this which allowed him to begin to get out of it.” She also wants to qualify the prosecutor's comments regarding his girlfriend. “She has been taking drugs for over three years, they met in January. He wasn't the one who caused her to fall in. »
But the already too heavy record of the Niortais, between domestic violence, drug trafficking or even a criminal association, will weigh heavily in the court's decision: he is sentenced to eighteen months of imprisonment and returns behind the bars.
