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French policeman accidentally shoots female colleague dead in ‘gun-drawing game’

A 27-year-old policewoman was shot dead by a colleague in Paris when the pair were reportedly playing a game of drawing their guns on each other and one weapon went off by accident.

Published: 11 March 2019 09:20 CET
French policeman accidentally shoots female colleague dead in 'gun-drawing game'
The officers were on duty at the new headquarters of Paris police when the incident occurred on Sunday. PHOTO: AFP

The woman, who was on duty at the entrance to the new headquarters of the Paris police in the 17th arrondissement, was shot in the head by her 28-year-old colleague.

“This is a stupid drama that has just ruined two lives,” a senior police official told Le Parisien newspaper.

The officer who fired the gun was placed in detention after the incident on Sunday at the police headquarters in the 17th arrondissement of the French capital.

The Paris prosecutor and the head of the Paris police force went to the scene of the incident on Sunday.

The prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into the affair which will be conducted by the IGPN, the body that investigates police abuses.

It's not the first time in France that an armed police has officer has accidentally shot dead a colleague.

Two years ago an officer in eastern France accidentally shot his colleague in the chest while he was checking his weapon.

In February 2017 a French military policeman accidentally fired his weapon during a speech by the then French president François Hollande, leaving two injured and the president briefly shaken.
 
See footage of Hollande's reaction below. 
 
 
 
 

 

 

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POLICE

Paris suburbs see third night of violence

The Parisian suburbs of Sevran, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Tremblay-en-France have seen clashes between residents and police, ever since an officer shot and killed the driver of a stolen van on Saturday.

Published: 29 March 2022 13:39 CEST
Paris suburbs see third night of violence

Angry residents and police clashed for a third night in suburbs north of Paris, leading to 13 arrests following the fatal shooting of a father-of-four by an officer at the weekend, police said Tuesday.

Despite a heavy police presence to prevent further violence, several cars, a dozen bins and an abandoned sports centre were set alight overnight in the low-income Sevran, Aulnay-sous-Bois and Tremblay-en-France suburbs, a police source told AFP.

The unrest began Saturday after a police officer fatally shot the driver of a van that had been reported stolen and was being inspected at a traffic light in Sevran at around lunchtime.

The officer was hospitalised afterwards “in a state of shock,” local prosecutor Eric Mathais said Sunday, while internal police investigators have opened a probe into the incident.

Local people who knew the man named as Jean-Paul told AFP that he had taken a van owned by his employer who owed him wages.

They have also questioned how the officer could justify opening fire when his life was not in danger, which is the only justification for using a weapon under French law.

A protest march by the dead man’s family is expected in the next few days.

Residents in France’s multiracial suburbs often complain about heavy-handed policing methods and violence that have led to a series of scandals in recent years, including the February 2017 arrest of a black man who was allegedly sodomised with a police baton.

Police unions say officers often face hostility and attacks, and are faced with the difficult task of trying to maintain order in impoverished high-rise housing estates that in some cases are centres of drug dealing and other criminality.

The French government began a public consultation in February aimed at devising ways to increase public confidence in the police.

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