One year after the car-ramming attack on the island of Oléron: the damaged life of Jacques, the man who dreamed of returning to sea

At Cotinière, stopover boaters come to dream along the port, lulled by the lapping of the Atlantic, more lenient here than elsewhere. As a child, Jacques would run there after school to watch the trawlers and carpenters repairing the canoes on the slipways at low tide. Today, his hands are calloused, his skin tanned by a life under the sun and his eyes fixed on his rigging with its large red sails. The “Bihannic”, “very small”, in Breton. Since his retirement in 2020, the man who was one of the last marine carpenters on the island of Oléron has devoted his days to it. “She’s his mistress,” smiles Monique, with boundless energy. When summer comes, he takes his granddaughters out to sea and walks along the coast to the point, at the Chassiron lighthouse. No need to venture beyond for this child of the island who grew up at a time when an endless concrete bridge did not yet connect it to the continent. But for the first time, there was no sea trip this year. Jacques, 70 years old, has not taken the helm of the Bihannic since November 5, 2025. That day, he went, like every morning, to get his bread from the port bakery by bike. The south wind rushed through the reeds and he did not hear the car rushing towards him.

The only memories he keeps are the image of the gravel on the road when he was on the ground, then the beating of the propellers, when he was airlifted to the hospital in La Rochelle. It was not a common road accident. For 36 minutes, Jean G., an idle thirty-year-old, deliberately crashed his Toyota into all the pedestrians and cyclists who were in his path. Declaring that he was responding to a “call from Allah”, he was indicted for seven assassination attempts, having seriously injured several people, including a parliamentary collaborator of a National Rally (RN) deputy. Since then, a new psychiatric assessment carried out at the start of the year has ruled out a “mental disorder of an alienating dimension”, while confirming that his discernment was impaired, reveals Le Figaro Magazine. It opens up the prospect of a trial for the survivors.