French ex-soldier kills three at neighbour’s birthday party
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Police are investigating the circumstances of the shootings at a family gathering to celebrate a man’s 20th birthday.
PHOTO: AFP
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ESPINASSE-VOZELLE, France – A former military sniper opened fire at a neighbour’s birthday party in a village in central France on July 13 night, killing three people before killing himself, the local authorities said.
Police are still investigating the circumstances of the shootings in Vozelle at a family gathering to celebrate a man’s 20th birthday.
Around 9.45pm on July 13 (3.45am, July 14, Singapore time), the former soldier, 57, appeared on a path leading to the home and began shooting, local prosecutor Jerome Picques told AFP.
The shooter, “armed with a rifle, opened fire several hundred metres away from his home towards that of his neighbours”, the Cusset public prosecutor’s office said in a statement on July 14.
The victims include the young man celebrating his birthday as well as his father, 53, and godfather, 54. Four others were wounded.
“The most likely hypothesis” is that the assailant “turned the gun on himself after firing”, Mr Piques said.
Mr Michel Marien, the mayor of Espinasse-Vozelle, said the shooter was a former soldier who had taken part in “major conflicts, like Afghanistan, and as a sniper”.
“There was obviously an abundance of weapons in his home,” he told the local daily La Montagne.
The Cusset public prosecutor’s office said it could “neither confirm nor deny” the mayor’s statements.
The shooter, who used a pellet gun, was “a priori” unknown to the police and judicial authorities, said the prosecutor, adding that no further shots were fired. AFP
