Firefighter injured by gunshot near Marseille: Laurent Nuñez evokes a possible “ambush”, the suspect presented to a judge

The perpetrator of the armed attack on a firefighter on Sunday during an intervention near Marseille is a 51-year-old man, "in social and family breakdown", who was presented on Tuesday to an investigating judge with a view to his indictment, announced the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor.

The victim, a professional chief warrant officer at the departmental fire and rescue service (SDIS), was seriously injured in the chest, hit by buckshot while firefighters were intervening to extinguish a heavy goods vehicle and light vehicle fire on the outskirts of the Plan-de-Campagne commercial area in Pennes-Mirabeau, near Marseille.

The perpetrator of the shots is an unemployed man, who lived on an agricultural wasteland hosting makeshift homes, caravans and several vehicle wrecks, details prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon in a press release. While in police custody, he gave “confused explanations”, saying that “he had decided to burn all his property” and had “shot through the trees so that someone would shoot him”, explains Jean-Luc Blachon.

“Trenched behind a hillock”, the author of the shots ended up surrendering to the authorities after the successive intervention of a police officer, then of the Raid, recalls the prosecutor. “It could be an ambush,” declared the Minister of the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, during questions to the government in the National Assembly.

At the time of his arrest, the accused had “53 rounds of ammunition in his pockets” and investigations led to the discovery of “11 cases of hit twelve caliber cartridges” on the ground. This man had no criminal record but was due to appear before the Aix-en-Provence criminal court this Tuesday, November 3, for carrying a weapon, threatening to kill a person holding public authority and damaging the property of others.

He was presented to an investigating judge on Tuesday for indictment on charges of attempted homicide of professional firefighters in the exercise of their duties, destruction and damage by dangerous means and illegal possession of category B weapons and ammunition. The prosecution requested his placement in pre-trial detention.