A French police officer who shot and killed two brothers accused of attempting to avoid a road check in Paris fired as their vehicle was driving away from him, new reports allege, reports The Guardian.
The officer, who is under investigation after the fatal shooting, has told detectives he was acting to save the lives of colleagues because the car was driving at them.
However, reports in the Libération newspaper and Mediapart based on 3D modelling of an initial ballistic report carried out by a forensic team suggest two of the nine shots fired at the vehicle were fired from behind after it had passed the officers. An autopsy found the driver had been fatally hit in the back of the head.
The claims come as Paris police face condemnation over another shooting and their conduct at the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid in Paris at the end of last month.
On 24 April Emmanuel Macron had just been re-elected for a second five-year mandate and had given his victory speech on the Champ de Mars around the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Security in the French capital was high when at about midnight, five uniformed police officers approached a dark grey Volkswagen Polo parked near Pont Neuf with its warning lights flashing. Two brothers, aged 25 and 31, were inside and a 42-year-old man in the back seat.
The car then allegedly drove towards at least one of the police officers, who jumped out of the way. The officers present claimed they were in danger and their 24-year-old colleague who shot at the car was acting in “legitimate defence”. The driver was found dead at the wheel, while the front passenger staggered out of the car and died in the road. Postmortem examinations of the two men suggested they had been killed by bullets fired from the side and the rear of the vehicle.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.
Read the original Mediapart report in French here.