“They experienced the greatest fright of their lives”: the altercation between neighbors degenerates into “a scene of serious and intense violence”

Conflit de voisinage en Cévennes au menu du palais de justice d'Alès. MIDI LIBRE – CHARLES LEDUC

Les faits qui se sont déroulés de nuit, à Bessèges, une petite commune des Cévennes gardoises, ont été abordés lors d’une audience du tribunal correctionnel d’Alès, ce jeudi 29 février.

Noise in an artery of Bessèges, during the night of February 25 to 26… and invectives between neighbors which degenerate! This is the case which will be heard this Thursday, February 29, in an immediate appearance hearing at the Alès criminal court. When a Bességeoise's sleep is disturbed, at 1:20 a.m., she goes to her window to see what's happening and finds herself face to face with her neighbor from ;opposite, who arrived from eastern France only a few months ago.

The neighbor, enraged, takes out her knives

The street separates them. From the balconies, names of birds fly. And this neighbor across the street "is freaking out". She throws a knife out the window, threatens, goes out into the street with another blade, goes back up and throws dishes and stones outside, then comes back down and breaks the glass door of the victim's building with a wooden bar. iron, before throwing a bicycle against his car.

He shoots a BB gun at the neighbors across the street

The companion of this enraged woman, aged 39, is not left out: he who at one point goes out into the street "for calm down", begins to fire a BB gun in the direction of the victim. Not knowing, at the time, that it was a fake weapon, his 17-year-old son, awakened by the noise, pulled it back to shelter it. .

"We are the neighbors who need to be cleared…", declare the defendants

From their box, the couple regrets. They admit to drinking that evening. He, who is 40 years old, explains that "we have been in this accommodation for five months, and we are the neighbors who need to be cleared…" Because, it seems, they had called the gendarmes several times because of the noise from the neighborhood. "An outburst like that of violence is still worrying", says Kellian Blanchet, the president of the hearing . If the accused admits everything, his co-defendant denies having fired in the direction of the victims' window.

The prosecution requires 18 months with probationary suspension

Pointing "a scene of serious and intense violence" having generated the civil parties "the biggest scare of their lives […] for a totally useless reason", Nathalie Welte, the deputy public prosecutor, concedes that the criminal record of the offenders is certainly heavy, but they have not been talked about since 2011. It then requires 18 months in prison with probationary suspension for two years and a ban on appearing in Bessèges.

What do the two defense lawyers argue ?

Lawyer for violent women, Me Julie Peladan emphasizes that"there is not a Manichean vision of the case, but tensions and mutual insults", before estimating that the required sentence is "adapted". Her colleague Me Florence Mendez, who defends the spouse, for her part pleads for acquittal, due to a "absence of intentional elements", because "the victims were not targeted by this gun".

"We load the car […] We're going back to Alsace!"

The defendants do not leave Alès with the same sentence. He is sentenced to nine months with suspended probation; she gets 14 months, also suspended on probation. Without forgetting a stay ban in Bessèges imposed on both! Which obviously poses no problem for these two neo-Gardois. During their trial, they declared, together, that after this hearing, "we go back, we load the car and we leave. We're going back to Alsace!"

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