The engineer indicted in particular for the assassination of three people in January 2021 in Drôme, Ardèche and Haut-Rhinwas still silent Tuesday, April 5, during a third reconstitution, we learned from a lawyer for the civil parties.
Nicknamed the “HRD killer”, Gabriel Fortin, 47, arrived shortly after 7 p.m. in a prison administration van in the parking lot of the Knauf company in Wolfgantzen (Upper Rhine), where was found on January 26, 2021 in the late afternoon the lifeless body of Estelle Luce, 39-year-old HRD, shot dead in her car.
Started around 7:30 p.m., the reconstruction continued around 11 p.m., explained during a break Me Jean-Marc Muller-Thomann, the lawyer for the two children of Estelle Luce and their father, a former companion of the victim.
Gabriel Fortin “did not want to get out of the van” and indicated that he had no “no statement to make”explained Me Muller-Thomann.
Mutic since his arrest, Gabriel Fortin “does not express itself and does not defend itself”noted the council, explaining that the suspect had however been “invited to come forward”u during reconstitution “if he changed his mind”.
The lawyer of the HRD companion at the time of his death as well as that of the Knauf company were present at the reconstitution, unlike those of Mr. Fortin, according to Me Muller-Thomann.
At the request of AFP, one of the suspect’s counsel, Lætitia Galland, did not respond.
Led by the Valence investigating judge Julie Demesse, in charge of the case, the reconstruction took place mainly at night, in the parking lot lit by streetlights, in order to correspond to the conditions in which the tragedy occurred.
Two more murders
Gabriel Fortin is also suspected of having fired, without touching him, on another HRD, domiciled in Wattwiller (Haut-Rhin), about forty kilometers from Wolfgantzen, the same day of the assassination of Ms. Luce.
This man had worked with her in 2008 in the human resources of a company ofEure-et-Loir from which Gabriel Fortin had been dismissed, according to the prosecution of Mulhouse.
This assassination attempt, for which Mr. Fortin was also indicted, will be the subject of a fourth and final reconstitution on Wednesday, in Wattwiller.
Gabriel Fortin had already refused to participate in the two previous reconstitutions organized in Valence (Drôme) in December and in Guilherand-Granges (Ardèche) in March.
The investigations quickly established a link between the events in Alsace and the murders two days later, on January 28, of the HRD of the Faun Environnement company in Guilherand-Granges then of a counselor from Pôle Emploi, shot dead Valence.
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