A priest, Father Krzystof, stabbed twenty times. A nun, Sister Marie-Claude, also injured while trying to disarm the attacker. And a suspect, Kévin R., a 31-year-old man from Var and residing in Nice, very close to the Saint-Pierre-d’Arène church where he is anything but a stranger.
What do we know about this young man hospitalized on Sunday evening because his condition was incompatible with police custody?
We recap.
A disorder”
The term was quickly dropped by the mayor of Nice, who arrived on the spot a few minutes after the tragedy. The facts are the work of a “imbalance”.
A police source told AFP that the suspect, who still had his knife in his hand when he was arrested in the church, was “obviously bipolar”.
Bipolar? “I am not a doctor”replied the prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes, Bernard Gonzalez, before specifying that Kévin R. was “unknown to police”but had “carried out several stays in psychiatry at the Sainte-Marie hospital, here in Nice”.
According to our information, Kévin R., treated for several years for a serious mental illness, was lately out of treatment. He would have acted in full “psychic decompensation”, caught up in his symptoms.
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photo">Kévin R., the suspect arrested shortly after the events at the Saint-Pierre-d’Arène church.Photo DR.
Immediately after his arrest, he had “spontaneously declared to the police that he was of the Jewish faith and that on this election day, he wanted to kill Macron” before falling back on a church.
And “well-known boy” at the church of Saint-Pierre-d’Arene
Kévin R. is anything but a stranger to Father Krzystof whom he stabbed, as well as to the priest-dean Gil Florini.
“Some say that this morning he wanted to hurt the President of the Republic by attacking a priest. You understand that he has problems…”he insisted, stressing that the church should remain open to all because it was the very nature of its function. “You have to be careful but not be afraid, otherwise you can’t live any longer. There’s no point in being over the top.”
While the witnesses, after psychological care in an annex of the church, were heard by the investigators, the scientific findings continued all afternoon on Sunday in the church of Saint-Pierre-d’Arène, where the floor was stained with numerous bloodstains.
His father spontaneously presents himself to the investigators
According to Christian Estrosi, the father of the suspect went to the scene a few minutes after the facts, as soon as he learned of it, in order to make himself available to the investigators.
“His father, when he learned what had just happened, immediately went there to make himself available to the investigators. And confirm a number of things about his follow-up” psychiatric, said the Chief Magistrate.
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the findings of the scientific police continued for a good part of the afternoon this Sunday.Photo Dylan Meiffret.
A funny story with the National Front in 2017
Kevin is not a total stranger. He appeared in a documentary aired in March 2017 on C8, on the breakthrough of the National Front among the under 25s. Produced by TVPresse Productions and in particular filmed by discreet camera, we see the Azurean making racist and homophobic remarks there, during a public meeting of the National Youth Front (FNJ).
Opposite him, embarrassed: Bryan Masson, currently elected opposition municipal official in Saint-Laurent-du-Var for the National Rally (RN). At the time, he was departmental secretary of the JNF. Several times, the frontist executive cuts him off, especially since the scene is filmed by two cameras from foreign channels.
Five years later, the RN denies any link with the young man. “During the meeting, he kept cutting me off, contradicting me… I quickly understood that he was disturbed”, recalls Bryan Masson. Who confirms that he no longer had contact with him. “Indeed, and we see it in the documentary, he tears up his contact details”confirms the journalist who infiltrated, Quentin Pichon. “He is an unbalanced person whose path we have crossed and who, today, has committed the worst”summarizes Bryan Masson.
“His words were not clear, his sentences were disjointed… I found him already tired at the time”remembers a former leader of the National Rally, who wishes to remain anonymous. “He had come to duty, where he cut out his Les Républicains card in front of us. We thought of using it to create the buzz but, in front of the slightly wacky character, we never did. in the end, he never joined us”he says.
The broadcast of this documentary caused a small controversy among the frontists. Kevin’s Facebook profile mentioned that he was a sound engineer at Canal+who hold C8. It was enough for the RN to advance the theory of a mounted scene. What was totally denied in an investigation carried out by two journalists from BuzzFeed, in which his father testifies. Who says: “Kevin is recognized as disabled, he has a heavy salary. He was a law student, but can no longer go to university today. He was looking for himself at the political level, he was at Les Républicains and there he wanted to test the FN.” And adds: “He was never a sound engineer. There are music-related things on his internet profiles because he makes music the self-taught way.”
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Reassuring news from the two victims
“The news is pretty good”: a few hours after the events, the vicar general Cyril Geley said to himself “reassured about the health of the injured”.
Hit in the chest and in the leg by about twenty stab wounds, Father Krzystof was taken care of by the Samu and then taken to the hospital. He was conscious during transport. Sister Marie-Claude, injured in the arm while trying to disarm the attacker, was also conscious when she was taken care of and also directed to a hospital center.
The deputy (LR) of the Alpes-Maritimes Eric Ciotti, who spoke with the victims before their transport, was also reassuring: “Father Kristof is conscious. He is a solid and lucid man, just like the nun. The emotion is obviously very great among the parishioners.”
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The terrorist track dismissed
Public prosecutor Xavier Bonhomme said on Sunday that he had opened an investigation into attempted murder and violence with a weapon. “He is a person on the judicial level who was not known, who has no background”said the magistrate, stating that the weapon, a knife with a blade of about ten centimeters, had been seized.
“The motives for the passage are difficult to establish. The investigation has been entrusted to the judicial police and the national anti-terrorist prosecution (Pnat) has been informed.”
