“They had to attack someone”: 26 seconds of images for an attempted murder near Montpellier

Me Pasquet-Marinacce and Me Darrigade, defending, and Me Chabert, civil party. FREE NOON – François Barrère

The Hérault Assize Court is trying with difficulty to identify the accused who attacked a cleaning employee at the Entrepôt nightclub on August 30, 2019. The six men tried for this crime deny all the facts, and the images which captured the scene are difficult to use.

Who should we trust to see clearly, asks the Assize Court of Hérault this Friday, May 24, facing six men accused of a crime that they all deny. On August 19, 2019, shortly before 6 a.m., the cleaning attendant at the l’Entrepôt complex, a nightclub in Lattes, located between the Prés d’Arène and Brico Dépôt, right next to In 709, he saw five individuals attack him who beat him and seriously injured his throat with a bladed weapon: he owes his survival only to the garrot he manages to do himself before driving to the emergency room.

"They told us we were really cool"

"We had no other problems at that time"says the nightclub's personnel manager, a colossus who was a security guard for fifteen years, and who immediately thought of this group of Parisians on vacation, who had come to the establishment three days earlier. "They had a great evening, they told us that we were really cool and that in d& rsquo;other cities didn't go as well with security."

Slap, knife and tear gas

It's at closing that things get bad: "When we told them to leave the parking lot, the ;one of them slapped the waiter and went to get a knife, my colleague intervened with tear gas.

So after the attack, the employee watches the videos from the two cameras which filmed the scene from afar, and formally recognizes at least two of the suspects. "They have a particular way of walking and moving, it’s about body language, body language. .Excuse me for the term , but a scum doesn't walk like an average person.

Pixelated silhouettes filmed from afar

Impossible that the attackers could have confused the sweeper, disabled since poliomyelitis contracted in childhood, with the security agents: "On sees him limping from miles away, he was with a broom, in cleaning clothes. They saw that everyone had left, they had to go after someone."

The expert appointed by the investigating judge worked with the video files. But how can we positively identify these strangers with their pixelated silhouettes, filmed from afar in the night over the 26 seconds that the attack lasts?

Expert's analyzes contested by the defense

"On has the feeling that these are the people -there, but this must be put into perspective for X1 and X4. It could be them, but we don't know" he ends up admitting after having described his work at length, with supporting photos.

Me Darrigade : "Le head of investigation s&rsquo ;is engaged in the same work as you and he has a totally different analysis from yours. How do you explain his X4 becoming your X5 ?"

The victim breaks down, the police intervene

The expert: "We compared images, walks, clothes and haircuts". Me Laure Valarié : "Can we talk about& ;rsquo;thorough analysis when we make a mistake about the color of the sneakers between white and black? You realize the seriousness of these errors?& quot;

At 5:40 p.m., the court discovers that the videos can be zoomed in. We go back and forth over the scene of the attack, in a tighter shot, but still blurry. The rain of blows is terrible. During the suspension, the victim breaks down, insults one of the accused, and his relatives, exhausted, raise their voices. "He’s a disabled person ! A disabled person who goes to work every day at 6 a.m.!" The police intervene. Resumption on Monday, with witnesses we are still looking for: will they shed light on the debates?

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