It was twenty years ago to the day. On March 27, 2002, in Nanterre, near Paris, a man opened fire on the elected officials gathered in the Municipal Council. The shooting, known since as the Nanterre massacre, left 8 dead and 19 injured. Yesterday, for the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, the city of Hauts-de-Seine launched several initiatives to pay tribute to the victims. Throwback to a night of dread.
Louisa Benakli, Olivier Mazotti, Jacotte Duplenne, Michel Raoult, Christian Bouthier, Monique Leroy-Sauter, Valérie Méot and Pascal Sternberg are the eight elected officials who died that evening. On March 27, 2002, the City Council meeting, which went on late, ended only at night. It is thus a little after one o’clock in the morning, when a man, who had hitherto been seated in the audience, gets up and takes out a weapon concealed under his jacket, before starting to shoot in front of him.
In just fifty seconds, the individual fired 37 times instantly taking eight lives, wounding 19 other people and leaving those who miraculously escaped traumatized for the rest of their lives. When he is finally mastered by elected officials and a municipal agent, he screams: “Kill me!”
The man who has just opened fire on the members of the municipal council of Nanterre, is called Richard Durn and is 33 years old at the time of the facts. The young man from Slovenia belonged to the Socialist Party before becoming an environmental activist, a member of the Greens while being part of the League for Human Rights.
Shooter commits suicide while in custody
Placed in police custody, Richard Durn confessed, before committing suicide the next day on March 28, 2002. The shooter threw himself from the fourth floor of 36 quai des Orfèvres, the historic headquarters of the Parisian judicial police. In a letter sent to a friend before the tragedy, Richard Durn explains the reasons for his acting out.
“Since I had become a living dead by my own will, I decided to end it by killing a mini local elite who were the symbol and who were the leaders and decision-makers in a city that I have always hated. (…) I am going to become a serial killer, a madman who kills. Why ? Because the frustrated that I am does not want to die alone, when I had a shitty life, I want to feel once powerful and free.
the 2002 presidential election turned upside down
This shooting, passed on to posterity, like the Nanterre massacre, hit the presidential campaign of 2002 head-on. The outgoing right-wing president, Jacques Chirac, was then a candidate for re-election. His speech on insecurity in the aftermath of the killing is considered by his opponents, especially on the left, as a political recovery.
Three days before the first round, the Prime Minister at the time, the socialist Lionel Jospin, for his part proposed nine measures to toughen the legislation on arms.
Richard Durn, sport shooter, had obtained licenses for the purchase of firearms. However, at the time of the events, these had long since expired but the weapons were still in his possession.
While right and left accuse each other, the extreme right intends to seize the drama well to feed its campaign, defending itself from any “political recovery”.
Far from the quarrels of the time, last February and in view of the commemorations of the tragedy which take place on March 26, 27 and 28, the Nanterre town hall officially saw the forecourt surrounding it change its name. To pay tribute to the victims, it is now known as the “Place du 27-mars”.