the soldier hospitalized after an attack in a nightclub has died

A soldier died Wednesday afternoon as a result of his injuries, five days after being attacked leaving a nightclub in Besançon for having made advances towards a young woman, we learned from the prosecutor, confirming information from France 3 Burgundy Franche-Comté.

This 26-year-old soldier from the 19th Engineer Regiment of Besançon, originally from Guadeloupe, had been hospitalized for five days. On Tuesday, prosecutor Étienne Manteaux clarified that he was brain dead. During the night from Thursday to Friday, around 3:50 a.m., the man was discovered unconscious in the parking lot of the QG nightclub, then hospitalized.

Video surveillance of the night establishment, used by the police, showed that a fight had taken place between the young man and three individuals. He was hit standing up, fell, and his skull hit the ground hard. His attackers then kicked him several times, including in the head. Three suspects have been identified. Two of them, aged 19, were arrested. They admitted to having hit the victim, arguing that the soldier had “tried an approach of seduction” with a young girl, girlfriend “of the third suspect, on the run, by asking him for his cell number twice” which displeased the boyfriend, according to Étienne Manteaux. They were indicted for “intentional violence in a meeting resulting in permanent disability” and incarcerated.

Closure of the nightclub

Étienne Manteaux clarified to AFP that he was going to request, from the investigating magistrate, that the qualification of the facts now be “intentional violence leading to death without intention of causing it, aggravated by the fact that the violence was committed in a meeting”. A sentence of 20 years of criminal imprisonment is incurred, he said.

One of the suspects has already been convicted six times, including two for aggravated violence. The discotheque was administratively closed for a period of 30 days by the prefect of Doubs, due in particular to “numerous acts of violence which were committed upon leaving the establishment” in recent months.