The suspect arrested in the mutilated horses case will be tried on September 26 in Le Havre. Placed in pre -trial detention, he is suspected of having killed five equines and having seriously injured 10 others in Normandy in recent months. He risks up to five years in prison.
The man in his twenties was arrested on August 4, the prosecutor of Le Havre, Soizic Guillaume, said on Thursday at a press conference. He is criticized for “serious abuses or acts of cruelty” on a domestic animal having led or not the death and the detention of weapons of category D, for seven facts which took place between the nights from June 26 to 27 and from July 31 to August 1, said the public prosecutor. The suspect “recognized his presence in two facts”, but disputes the others.
“A similar process was used” with “more or less deep lacerations, sometimes up to 8 centimeters”, in some cases “shot eyes” and fractures or crushes linked to blows on equines, the prosecutor reported. One of the horses killed belonged to the suspect’s girlfriend, “without the latter having reported a particular conflict with her,” said Soizic Guillaume.
No psychiatric disorder
Human blood found on the last place of aggression made it possible to identify the suspect, “already known” of justice for acts of violence, she said.
Searches have made it possible to find “a cutter that presented traces of dried blood”, a mass and clothes with “reddish traces” or even horses cookies, while the question “has no specific link with equines”, according to the prosecutor.
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According to the magistrate, the young man “cannot explain the reasons for his actions, he explains that he had obeyed impulses”. Soizic Guillaume specifies that a second psychiatric expertise will be diligent, a first expertise having detected “no psychiatric disorder that can alter or abolish his discernment”.