VIDEO. “You dirty bastard”… A septuagenarian arrested after cutting a gardener’s throat with a cutter

The images of the attack shocked many Internet users. A 75-year-old man was arrested and placed under judicial supervision on Monday November 20. The septuagenarian stabbed a gardener in the throat with a cutter who was working in Villecresnes (Val-de-Marne) on Friday, after having uttered racist insults against him.

The offenses retained are “violence with use of a weapon” and “non-public insult due to origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion”, the public prosecutor told AFP, confirming information from the news site StreetPress. But according to the victim’s lawyer, M^e Hosni Maati, “for (his) client, it is indeed an attempted homicide”.

Friday around 2 p.m., the septuagenarian lost his temper when he noticed that a van from a gardening company was blocking his exit from a dead end. “You dirty bastard,” he said before grabbing a cutter and slashing the throat of the 29-year-old gardener 10 centimeters long, a police source detailed.

“My client thought he was dying”

According to this same police source, this version of the facts is corroborated in particular by a video taken by the victim and two videos from video surveillance cameras. The site Mediapart published excerpts of the attack. “Within a few centimeters, he could have hit the jugular or the carotid artery. My client thought he died,” insisted M^e Maati. The young father’s injury resulted in 15 days of ITT.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of LFI, condemned a “vile attempt at Arabophobic throat-slitting”while PS boss Olivier Faure spoke of “freewheeling racism”. LFI deputies from Val-de-Marne were also outraged at X (formerly Twitter), Rachel Keke calling to “fight racism”, while Louis Boyard, Mathilde Panot and Clémence Guetté described the attack as “racist”. The septuagenarian will have to appear in court on May 16, 2024, the prosecution said.