A manhunt was engaged this Sunday in the Dordogne to find a former heavily armed soldier, wanted after shooting at gendarmes called for family violence in Lardin-Saint-Lazare, a village about thirty kilometers from Sarlat.
According to the gendarmerie, the GIGN of Toulouse and the Paris region are in intervention on the scene and no less than 210 gendarmes are engaged. Four helicopters fly over the area and work in rotation of two, the prefect of Dordogne, Frédéric Périssat, told AFP. Two negotiators are also on site.
According to a source close to the investigation, the suspect is a former soldier who was in the army from 2011 to 2016. “The man is heavily armed. He’s in his thirties, he’s athletic and moves quickly ”, Francine Bourra, the mayor of Lardin-Saint-Lazare, told AFP. “We located it in a perimeter of 4 to 5 km, but it is a wooded area, difficult to access”, added the aedile, according to whom the man “Is very stubborn”. The suspect “Had been imprisoned for domestic violence and that is why he wore an electronic bracelet”, she clarified.
Ex-partner and her children are unharmed
“The gendarmerie forces are trying to fix him… Contact was made on several occasions sporadically but this resulted in gunfire from the individual. Every time there was contact, he opened fire ”, the prefect of Dordogne told the press on the spot. The gendarmes did not reply, the prefect told AFP, according to whom “This situation must be resolved as best as possible, that is to say without bloodshed so that he can answer for his actions without endangering the gendarmerie forces”.
The drama began in the night: “Around midnight, the man, ex-partner of a young woman, shows up at his home where he exercises violence on the latter’s new friend”, the gendarmerie explained to AFP. “When the gendarmerie showed up, the individual opened fire on the vehicles and then he escaped into a wooded area near the village”, Prefect Périssat told AFP. “The ex-partner wanders through the streets of the village and declares that he wants to attack the gendarmes. He shoots in their direction and seriously damages two service vehicles of the gendarmerie ”, according to the gendarmerie. According to a source familiar with the matter, “His ex-partner and his children are unharmed, recovered by the gendarmerie and placed in safety”.
A case comparable to the tragedy of Puy-de-Dôme
The prefect of Dordogne had launched early this Sunday morning a call on the airwaves of France Bleu Dordogne, inviting the population of the town to “To stay at home locked up, and not to move around”. A call relayed by Mayor Francine Bourra.
By midday, according to an AFP journalist on site, the streets of this village of some 1,800 inhabitants were deserted. In front of the school, a gendarmerie car was parked, windows shattered by gunfire.
“Operations are currently underway in #Dordogne to arrest a man who fired several times. I follow the operations of the national gendarmerie which deploys all the means necessary to achieve this. Courage to the gendarmes ”, tweeted the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin.
A few months ago, a comparable affair had turned into a tragedy in the Puy-de-Dôme. On the night of December 22 to 23, a 48-year-old man shot dead three gendarmes and seriously injured a fourth, intervened to help his partner, victim of domestic violence and who had taken refuge on the roof of the house.
Heavily armed, the man set fire to the building and then fled in his vehicle before being found dead, a weapon in his hand and another not far from him, about 1.5 kilometers from his home.
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