Sentenced to 22 years in prison for stabbing a thirty-year-old to death with twelve stab wounds in Clermont-l'Hérault
|Jocelyn Avignon lived at 32 rue du Marché in Clermont-l’Hérault. ML – Google Street View
The tragedy dates back to the night of October 19 to 20, 2022. That night, around 3 a.m., claiming to be humiliated, the accused, barely 18 years old and drunk, was unable to control his nerves and committed the irreparable.
“That night, I was hit in my ego, my pride. I felt humiliated by his words and I didn't recognize myself. It was my hand that took control and not my brain and I stabbed him.”
“Then someone screamed, it woke me up, and I ran away. I don't remember everything that happened but I know it was me. I'm 100% at fault. I regret what I did because I ruined the life of an entire family…"
From the top of his 1.95 m and his 20 years and despite a deep, calm voice and a fairly rich vocabulary, he is a “child” fragile who appeared in the dock at the Assize Court on September 26 and 27 to answer to the charge of murder.
A homicide committed on rue du Marché in Clermont-l’Hérault, on the night of October 19 to 20, 2022 around 3 a.m., on the person of Jocelyn Avignon, a 38-year-old warehouse forklift driver and father of two children.
A surreal scene
A frenzied outburst of violence punctuated by twelve stab wounds. Five in the thorax region, including a fatal wound to the heart causing significant and rapid hemorrhage.
Five more to the back, causing bleeding in the lungs. The last two on his left arm and thumb. “A surreal scene”, the accused himself admits, who still has trouble explaining it.
A failure at all
At that time, aged 18, having broken off ties with his father following violence he suffered, he lived alone in an apartment next to the victim, whom he did not know.
“He is a failure at everything. He smokes cannabis, drinks alcohol, goes out, has no social support and plays long hours of violent video games.”
He dreams of killing his father
So much so that his mother, who knows “his fragility, his lack of self-confidence” and knows that he is “lost and angry”, spares no effort to try to help him.
To the point of requesting compulsory hospitalization from a psychiatrist, a few days before the tragedy, when his son confesses to him that he has already dreamed, three times, that he killed his father.
He told me to get lost. I didn't understand why he was talking to me like that
“This hand that was extended to me, I didn't take it and I withdrew into myself”, regrets the Montpellier resident. “That evening, I had gotten drunk (Editor's note: he had 0.66 g of alcohol in his blood six hours after the incident) with a bottle of vodka to forget my problems.”
“Then I went out to smoke a cigarette and I saw a man staggering in front of me. We talked and I accompanied him to his landing. I closed the door then opened it again because I was afraid he would fall down the stairs. And then he told me to get lost. I didn't understand why he was talking to me like that. I got angry and didn't move."
"He then went out into the street, approached a group of people and said to them, talking about me: “He's gay, he's gay” and they laughed.” A humiliation he couldn't stand. The rest, tragic, is history.
Divorce of his parents, harassment, gore videos…
When the president asks him about the origin of this anger he has inside him, he answers immediately: “my parents' divorce, the harassment I suffered at school, the friends who took me for an idiot and these gore videos that I watched because I was attracted to violence. This violence that makes us accepted and respected by others."
Which also explains, in addition to having already been racketeered and assaulted in the past, the discovery, at his home, of numerous knives and two alarm pistols.
I overreacted
And the accused concluded: “That night, I just wanted to take a drunk guy home in good shape. He got angry and I overreacted."
He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
“A sentence beyond his age”
"I am going to appeal the sentence because I believe it is too harsh", Maître Luc Abratkiewicz immediately responded. “For me, these 22 years of criminal imprisonment only reflect the seriousness of the facts, not the personality traits of an 18-year-old who was experiencing significant inner unrest. He is sentenced to a sentence longer than his age, it's staggering. It's almost a life sentence.”
“Especially since he only has one conviction on his criminal record (Editor's note: a stab wound on December 31, 2021 resulting in a minor injury). That he had a lot of problems related to his parents. That he drank to forget and, according to the psychologist, alcohol played a driving role in his actions. Not to mention that five days before the events, he had seen a psychiatrist who had given him treatment for an anxiety-depressive disorder…"
"For all this, he must benefit from mitigating circumstances. All the more so since the court did not take into account the development of this boy in the remand center where psychiatrists say that he is capable of introspection and reflection."
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