In the summer of 2020, Yassine El Azizi had killed a young gendarme trying to avoid road control when he had 165 grams of cocaine in his vehicle.
The driver, who had fatally struck a gendarme by fleeing a road check in the summer of 2020 in the Lot-et-Garonne, was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment by the Assize Court of Agen. Yassine El Azizi, 31, had been tried since June 16 for voluntary violence on a person who was depositary of the public authority that led to death without intention to give it. Throughout his trial, he denied having deliberately rushed to the victim. “It’s a real scandal. It is an extremely heavy, above-ground verdict. We go on appeal “immediately indignant the accused’s lawyer, Me Édouard Martial. “Above all, it was not necessary to disappoint both public opinion and of course the gendarmerie. Do not make the human effort, of humanity towards the verdict, it seems to me to be properly unbearable ”added his advice, qualifying as“Shameter” the duration of “Two hours” deliberation.
A maximum sentence in accordance with the requisitions of the lawyer general Pierre Sennes, who did not “Recognized no excuse” to the accused who “Deliberately took the option of rushing into the gendarme in extreme violence”. “Their looks were crossed”he said. “For all the police, police, gendarmerie, it is a real recognition of the risks which are taken every day by the police to ensure the security of all on the ground”reacted for his part the father of the victim, Christian Lemée. The death of Mélanie Lemée, ex-champion of France military judo who had just succeeded at 25 years of the examination of judicial police, had aroused great emotion.
The brand new interior minister at the time, Gérald Darmanin, had reserved his first trip to him in the region and then lost two days later to his coffin near Bordeaux before giving him the Legion of Honor posthumously. A white march had also gathered 2,000 people in Aiguillon, a small town of 4,000 inhabitants where the young Norman worked in a local brigade. Her unit depended on the neighboring gendarmerie of Port-Sainte-Marie, where she died on Saturday July 4, 2020 in the evening by participating in the interception of a vehicle driving at high speed.
“I didn’t see it”
The driver, who had just refused a road control, had attempted twenty kilometers further to force a gendarmerie dam. Bypassing harrows deployed on the road, he had made a brutal gap, violently hitting the victim who had not survived his injuries. The driver led without a license, under the influence of narcotics, and at an excessive speed (more than 150 km/h). He had 165 grams of cocaine in his vehicle. Quoting the experts who succeeded themselves at the helm, the Advocate General said that “Yacine El Azizi had perfect visibility” and did not have “No action on the brake pedal”remaining “Pied to the floor”which makes him “A killer”.
Before the court, the accused admitted to having taken “Reckless risks” et “Deserve the prison”while refuting to be “A murderer”. “I see the gendarmerie truck, I saw the herses at the last moment and the colleague of the victim retreat but she did not see her”he said about the victim, now that his “Only will was to flee”. “We would have liked to have another attitude, that he recognizes things and he looked at his feet. His apologies, they were not at all sincere ”said the mother of the victim, Danielle Letissier.
The lawyer for the gendarme’s parents described a “Stroke to mindfulness death”. “The chase is a crime, it’s serious, we all agree, but it’s not a crime”retorted on Tuesday Me Victor Casellas, one of the lawyers of the accused, pleading the acquittal for the criminal facts retained against him. The defense considered that his client should have been tried for manslaughter aggravated by a criminal court, not at the assizes. His appeal from the referral order had been rejected by the investigating chamber and then by the Court of Cassation.
