A Paris police officer has been charged in the fatal election night shooting.
According to a judicial source, a French police officer has been charged with involuntary murder after fatally shooting a motorist attempting to evade police and a passenger in Paris on Sunday, just hours after Emmanuel Macron was re-elected.
The 24-year-old cop fired his assault weapon to try to halt the automobile as it hurtled towards his colleagues on the beautiful Pont Neuf bridge, later claiming self-defense.
However, he was promptly detained for interrogation by the police department’s internal investigations unit, and prosecutors ruled that the officer had most certainly used excessive force.
According to a police report obtained by AFP, about a dozen bullets were fired, with “five or six shots injuring the inmates.”
The cop was brought before a court, who decided late Wednesday to charge him with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of the driver, according to a legal source.
Less serious accusations of “wilful violence by a person in authority” were filed in connection with the death of the front-seat passenger and the injuries of a person in the rear seat.
He was forced to surrender his firearms and barred from doing any police activities that required interaction with the general population.
The judgement was denounced as “unacceptable” by the right-wing Alliance police officers’ union, which called for a protest in front of the historic Paris courtroom on Monday to protect “the presumption of justifiable defence.”
According to the police report, the automobile was parked the wrong way with its warning lights flashing on the banks of the Seine, leading the five-person foot patrol to investigate.
When questioned, the motorist abruptly accelerated at one officer, who managed to move out of the way.
The two individuals who were slain had lengthy criminal histories, including narcotics convictions.
While police in France went unarmed on normal patrols for years, authorities began providing assault weapons following the November 13, 2015, mass jihadist terror slaughter in Paris, which was followed by a wave of additional fatal Islamist assaults.
Since the lengthy trial for the November 2015 attacks, France’s greatest post-war tragedy, began in September, security personnel have been on high alert.
Salah Abdeslam, the sole survivor of the attack, testified last month that he had a last-minute change of heart and decided not to detonate his explosive vest after years of quiet.