A man who killed three people and injured seven others on Saturday in Reunion Island was indicted on Monday for murder and attempted murder and placed in pre-trial detention, we learned from the prosecution.
Saturday morning in La Possession, in the west of the island, the 39-year-old man (well 39) fatally stabbed his mother and his 5-year-old cousin. A family member who tried to intervene was injured when the man fled in a car.
The suspect then hit five people. The journey ended when he crashed into a motorbike, his car stopping in front of a bank branch where he fatally stabbed a maintenance worker. The suspect also stabbed a gendarme from the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Group), who intervened to arrest him.
“The desire to kill everyone in its path”
During his police custody, he admitted to having had, under the influence of anger, “the desire to kill all the people in his path”, indicated Sunday in a press release Véronique Denizot, public prosecutor in Saint -Denis.
The magistrate specified that the thirty-year-old had recognized “the materiality of all the facts”: he explained that he “did not want his mother to keep his 5-year-old cousin” and had “not supported” on Saturday “that the “child” is “present again at the family home”.
The facts caused great excitement in Reunion. Many political figures, magistrates, the prefect Jérôme Filippini and the bishop of Reunion, Mgr Pascal Chane Teng, presented their condolences to the victims’ relatives.