Placed in police custody on Saturday afternoon after going himself to the Ghyvelde gendarmerie (North), the 22-year-old suspect “spontaneously recognized the facts and is very calm, 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.
Who are the five victims?
Véronique Planckeel claims that her client was angry with his first victim, Paul Dekeister, a 29-year-old man 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.
He completed “a period of training and professionalization contract” […] more than a year and a half ago” during which he was the target of “no reproach”, indicated Patrick Guerbette, the founder of ECS. According to him, he had then “not at all” been in contact with the two agents targeted. These two fathers in their thirties, Marc and Aurélien, were killed around 4 p.m. in the port area of Loon-Plage, on the outskirts of Dunkirk. They were on a surveillance mission aboard a company vehicle, added Bruno Willems, CEO of ECS, during the press briefing. For Patrick Guerbette, “anyone who would have been there, at that moment on the road, could have been a victim”. “He knew one by sight, it seems, that’s all,” says the suspect’s lawyer.
Finally, there is currently no explanation for the murder of two migrants, who could be of Iranian nationality, aged 19 and 30, according to the Dunkirk public prosecutor's office, near a camp.
Opening an investigation
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.
