The circumstances of the tragedy are becoming clearer, but remain unclear. Paul D., the man suspected of the five murders on Saturday in the North, had resentment against his first victim, who was his former employer, AFP learned Monday from his lawyer.
Placed in police custody on Saturday afternoon after going himself to the Ghyvelde gendarmerie, the 22-year-old suspect “spontaneously recognized the facts and is very composed, very calm”, assures his lawyer, Véronique Planckeel.
The lawyer is, however, “not sure that this boy really understands the consequences of his actions” nor that he “knows what to answer” to the investigators. Véronique Planckeel claims that her client was angry with his first victim, a 29-year-old man who ran a road transport company. He was killed around 3:15 p.m. in front of his home in Wormhout.
This man was her former employer, but “we do not know how the employment contract was terminated,” she emphasizes. Despite this animosity, “we don’t know the motive, not really (…) Many gray areas remain,” she adds.
VideoQuintuple murder near Dunkirk: the terrifying journey of Paul D, the alleged shooter
“No explanation” for the murder of two migrants
Concerning the two security agents killed almost an hour later at their workplace in Loon-Plage, on the outskirts of Dunkirk, “he knew one of them by sight, it seems, that’s all”, indicates the lawyer.
Finally, she adds, there is currently “no explanation” for the murder of two migrants, who could be of Iranian nationality, according to the Dunkirk public prosecutor’s office, near a camp.
The suspect “is unknown to the police and the judicial authority” and “several firearms were found in his car,” Dunkirk prosecutor Charlotte Huet said on Sunday.
The investigation was opened for “murders preceded, accompanied or followed by another crime” and “acquisition, possession, carrying and transport of category A and B weapons”, acts punishable by life imprisonment.
Monday morning, Véronique Planckeel had not been informed of an extension of her client’s police custody. But, “given the finding of offenses against weapons legislation, this police custody can last up to 96 hours, that is to say until Wednesday,” the prosecutor said on Sunday.
