The BRI (research and intervention brigade) deployed in the Marais. Snipers on the roofs. Charlot, Pastourelle and Perche streets closed. And stunned neighbors. Friday April 29 in the morning, the 3rd arrondissement looked like a film set. However, these were real scenes that took place before the eyes of passers-by who saw an intervention column arrive ready to attack a madman, holed up in his apartment.
Here are the facts, piecemeal, such as le Marais Mood, was able to reconstruct them. Arriving at around 7:30 a.m. at the home of a tenant in Passage de Retz – a condominium located at 9, rue Charlot – a bailiff, accompanied by a locksmith and movers, was surprised to see an armed man sitting on his sofa with a 22 long rifle between the legs. He immediately turned around and alerted the police, who arrived in the neighborhood shortly after.
The tenant in question was, according to a neighbor, a desperate septuagenarian because he had just learned that he was suffering from generalized cancer. At Christmas, the rather irascible man had thrown his tree from the fifth floor and, in the process, broken a glass roof. “It was a gesture that worried us, it could have hurt someone! » adds another neighbor. “He moved into this beautiful residence in 2019 but had not paid his rent for two years. He lived there alone, in a 120 square meter duplex with his two cats.”
Before taking recovery steps, his landlord had offered him three other less expensive apartments, but the man did not want to move to a smaller space.
Around noon, elite police officers intervened to “make contact”, as they say in their jargon, and found on the scene… a deceased man sitting on his sofa. He had committed suicide, apparently even before the bailiff arrived.
Text: Katia Barillot
29.04.22
