Since the end of January 2024, psychosis has reigned in the streets of Grenoble, especially among women in the evening. While few of them can generally boast of feeling safe outside once rush hours have passed, they must now be extra vigilant: according to information shared by the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office in a press release on Tuesday March 26, 2024, an attacker has in fact been raging in the streets of the city for several weeks now. It is more precisely in the city center, as well as in nearby towns, notably Saint-Martin-d’Hères and Saint-Martin-le-Vinoux, that he attacks his victims. So far, as Grenoble prosecutor Eric Vaillant reports, the man behind these attacks is suspected of three rapes, two sexual assaults and four acts of violence. Facts which would have been committed in recent weeks, between January 22 and March 16, 2024.
Grenoble rapist: a precise modus operandi
In each of the attacks, the victims were young women aged 20 to 27. The attacker follows a very precise operating procedure to approach them: he most often intervenes alone with the threat of a knife, always in the evening and at night, during the week or on weekends when the victims are on the way to return home. Dressed in black from head to toe, he travels to the scene of his attacks each time using a scooter, also black. And since he is now actively sought by the authorities, a description of what he might look like has been shared by the Grenoble public prosecutor, Éric Vaillant. Man is thus described as a “20-year-old man, European type, without accent, around 1.70 m tall and of normal or even slightly plump build, brown eyes, pale complexion and rather red hair”. Still according to Eric Vaillant, everything is being done to find the attacker of these women: the magistrates of the Grenoble public prosecutor’s office and the city police officers are all mobilized. The case, for its part, was entrusted to the local judicial police service in Grenoble.