Two brothers were indicted for “murder” and “violence with weapons and in meetings”, suspected of having killed a 30-year-old man in Saint-Thurial (Ille-et-Vilaine) during an attack with a gun. baseball bat, we learned on Wednesday from the Rennes prosecutor’s office. The two men, who were arrested on Sunday afternoon, were placed in pre-trial detention on Tuesday evening. They face a sentence of 30 years of criminal imprisonment, declared Rennes public prosecutor Philippe Astruc.
During the night from Saturday to Sunday, the two victims, who were traveling in a van after spending the evening together, were intercepted by a car driven by one of the two brothers. The latter, aged 50 and already convicted for traffic offenses in 2012 and 2016, said he took his vehicle after hearing “honking” from the van near his home, the prosecutor detailed on Tuesday. He then caught up with the van, intercepted it and “hit the two occupants with his fists and a baseball bat,” he said.
A first altercation a few weeks earlier
The autopsy confirmed a death of “traumatic origin” including several fractures or wounds to the face and skull due to blows from a bat, according to the magistrate. The second person in the van, a 38-year-old man, survived the beating. Hospitalized, he benefited from a ten-day ITT, according to the prosecutor. His friend “had a first altercation with the defendants, about two weeks earlier, who reproached him for having parked in a car park not far from their home and that since then + he was a little after them +”, according to the same source.
The surviving victim admitted that his friend had honked near the shed and caravan where the two brothers lived, away from the town, before continuing on his way and being attacked. The deceased “was 30 years old (…) he was a person very involved in community life, a young father who was going to become a father again in a few weeks”, lamented to AFP the mayor of Saint- Thurial, David Moizan. A white march in memory of the victim is planned for Saturday morning in Saint-Thurial. The town is “overwhelmed (…) by this unjustifiable act”, confided the mayor.