u/JosLetz

On June 27, 2023, in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, a French police officer fired a single shot that killed 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk during a traffic stop. Within hours, a short viral video—missing the events that came before it—sparked nationwide riots and intense debate in France. What followed were several days of widespread unrest that caused over €1 billion (roughly $1.1 billion) in damages to businesses, along with political statements and claims that quickly formed a dominant narrative. The book Dernier Recours (Last Resort) by journalist William Molinié reconstructs the full sequence hour by hour using investigative records, witness statements, and official findings. (Note: The book is currently available in French; no English translation has been released as of today) It does not take sides or judge; it examines what was publicly claimed versus what the evidence supports.

The initial public understanding in France rested on several assertions that later investigation contradicted. Officers never shouted "Shoot him" ("Shoote-le"), as investigators determined. No blow was struck with a gun butt before the shot. The incident was not a simple routine identity check but followed a two-minute-plus high-speed chase in which the car endangered bystanders near a school. Expert analysis of the vehicle confirmed Nahel restarted the car voluntarily (performing multiple deliberate actions: pressing the start button, shifting into gear, and accelerating), not by reflex or after being hit. The officer did not fire with the intent to kill but as a last resort to stop a vehicle that had repeatedly tried to drive away, endangering lives — hence the book’s title Dernier Recours. The widely circulated 40-second clip omitted this critical prelude; even its author later expressed regret over the incomplete framing.

These distortions shaped the broader reaction across France. While outrage over the death played a role, surveys of those who rioted showed only about 8% were primarily motivated by Nahel’s death, with group dynamics (29%) and thrill-seeking (23%) figuring more prominently. The unrest was neither purely spontaneous nor ended solely by external actors such as drug dealers protecting their turf; rioters largely ran out of fireworks and ammunition against police. Far-left militants under court exclusion orders participated actively, including in attacks on police infrastructure. Early political statements, including from President Macron, were made before key facts emerged, helping lock in the initial story that later evidence complicated. The officer’s account, by contrast, remained consistent across all hearings.

Article in French : https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/affaire-nahel-il-a-bien-tente-de-redemarrer-quatre-fois-avant-le-tir-du-policier-releve-william-molinie-20260331

Nota : The book is much better than my write up. A previous version of this story made without having read the book was very confusing. I hope this one will be better.

A Ouigo high-speed train, France's budget bullet-train service, Nice to Paris. Saturday, June 27, 9 PM. A 15-year-old girl feels sick mid-ride and sits down next to a stranger—a 16-year-old boy.

He pulls a knife. Drags her to the train bathroom. Rapes her.

"She explained having been taken under the threat of a knife, after feeling unwell and sitting next to the suspect"—Paris prosecutor's office.

Locked in the bathroom with her attacker, she manages to alert the train crew. The train pulls into Paris's Gare de Lyon station. Rail security officers grab the suspect as he steps off. Ten minutes later, he's handed to police.

The girl gives her statement to detectives at the station, then goes home with her parents.

The suspect is held in police custody—extended through Sunday night. Tuesday, June 30, prosecutors open a formal criminal investigation.

"The suspect was indicted for rape under threat of a weapon and violence committed in a means of transport. He was placed in pre-trial detention" — Paris prosecutor's office.

Under French law, committing violence inside public transportation is a legal aggravating factor, meaning it carries a harsher sentence than the same crime elsewhere.

Article in French : https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/un-adolescent-de-16-ans-mis-en-examen-et-place-en-detention-provisoire-pour-le-viol-d-une-mineure-dans-un-train-nice-paris-20260703

An unenforced deportation order. A master key kept from a construction job. A door that opens at 3 AM.

Roubaix, July 21, 2022

Roubaix is a post-industrial city in northern France, known internationally for its La Piscine museum—a celebrated art museum housed inside a restored Art Deco swimming pool, listed among France's most distinctive cultural sites. The B&B Lille Roubaix Campus Gare hotel sits near the city's docks. Marie, 37 years old, checked in for a professional training course. The building used standard magnetic keycard access. Loussaief had worked maintenance shifts inside the same building.

Room 319

Between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM, the door to room 319 opened. No forced entry. Loussaief held a master key to the establishment—kept from his time on site. He was armed with a box cutter.

He assaulted, threatened, and raped Marie multiple times. The attack lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes. The Lille public prosecutor's office stated: « Entre 3 et 4 heures du matin, un individu disposant d'un passe et armé d'un cutter est entré dans la chambre de l'hôtel »—"Between 3 and 4 AM, an individual with a master key and armed with a box cutter entered the hotel room." Hotel video surveillance identified him. He was arrested July 22. One victim. One attacker.

Douai, June 17, 2026

Hearings opened on June 15, 2026 before the Nord Assize Court, sitting in Douai—France's highest-tier criminal court, reserved for the most serious offences (rape, murder, acts of barbarity), judged by three magistrates and six citizen jurors. Three days of proceedings. Loussaief denied throughout.

June 17, 2026. The jury retired. The court sentenced Aziz Loussaief to 25 years of criminal imprisonment [Paywall] for rapes with torture or acts of barbarity.

What the file shows

Aziz Loussaief, from Tunisia, had no legal right to remain in France. He was subject to an Obligation de Quitter le Territoire Français (OQTF)—an Order to Leave French Territory, a standard administrative measure requiring an undocumented foreign national to leave the country within one month. It was never enforced. His file already carried prior proceedings for an attempted rape in Toulon, August 2020. He picked up occasional construction jobs. He gravitated around northern France.

Dane Langhorne fled to Guyana after being freed on a botched court notice. Alicia Faye, 25, was shot dead less than 24 hours after landing. The alleged kingpin walked free.

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The overnight flight from Paris Orly to Cayenne — capital of French Guiana, France's overseas department on the northeastern coast of South America — lands in the early afternoon. On March 12, 2021, Alicia Faye, 25, from the Bordeaux suburb of Saint-Louis-de-Montferrand, was among the passengers. She had told her parents she was going to Paris for the weekend to see friends.

At 17:00, a man named Dane Langhorne was waiting in the arrivals hall. Airport cameras recorded him there. He had booked the room at the Amazonia Hotel in his own name.

At 00:45, Alicia left the hotel and got into Langhorne's grey Peugeot 5008. Fifteen minutes later, a resident near the route Raban/Baudel heard what she described as a firecracker. The neighbourhood dogs started barking.

"She was in flip-flops. She couldn't run."

The next morning at around 10:00, a delivery driver found Alicia on a dirt path thirty metres from the route Raban/Baudel. Face down, blood across her face, defensive wounds on her forearms, phone still clutched in her hand. Shot once in the head, less than 24 hours after landing. A 9mm cartridge case lay nearby. The suitcase and the €25,000 were gone.

Her father Bernard Faye — a former boxer — reconstructed what he believes happened: "She must have sensed something was wrong. She probably refused to hand over the money. She must have struggled, tried to escape by opening the door. He chased her down the path. It was easy to catch her: she was wearing flip-flops." ("J'imagine qu'elle n'a pas voulu lui donner l'argent. Elle a dû se débattre, essayer de s'enfuir en ouvrant la portière. Il l'a poursuivie dans le chemin. C'était facile de la rattraper : elle ne pouvait pas courir, elle était en tongs.")

How a 25-year-old ended up on that plane

Covid had gutted Alicia's work life. A temporary contract with La Poste. A sales job at the Nespresso boutique in Bordeaux. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend. In early 2021, she reconnected with a Cameroonian ex-boyfriend she had briefly dated in 2017 — a recruiter for Stéphane Adaya, a Bordeaux-based dealer with four years of prior prison time at Gradignan, and the organiser of the Bordeaux end of a cocaine network running between French Guiana and the Gironde since 2020. The recruiter told police in custody that Alicia had the ideal profile: metropolitan French, young, zero criminal record.

Bernard Faye: "She met Stéphane Adaya two days before she left. He had already done four years. He knew exactly what he was doing." She had done one earlier run in February 2021 without incident. The promised payment for this second trip: €15,000. The €25,000 she carried were destined for a local supplier.

At the trial, Adaya testified by videoconference from prison and named Langhorne as the person most likely to have killed Alicia to take the money. He also mentioned for the first time a man he called "Johan," supposed to collect the cash at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.

Blood in six zones. A lie about a nosebleed.

On March 15, Langhorne walked into the Cayenne gendarmerie. He said he had simply picked Alicia up from the airport and driven her to the hotel. Nothing more.

The forensics dismantled that story. Blood traces from Alicia Faye were found in six distinct locations in Langhorne's car — contact marks, not splatter — on one of his flip-flops, and on the accelerator pedal. He had tried to clean the vehicle. His explanation: she had a nosebleed in the car. Bernard Faye: "When you have a nosebleed, you don't leave blood spatter everywhere." ("Quand on saigne du nez, on ne laisse pas des giclées de sang partout !") Police also found more than €5,000 at his home and €3,000 in his car, wrapped in clingfilm. A former sex worker he used as a mule testified she had called him at 03:10 on the night of the murder. The airport cameras had shown he was waiting in the arrivals hall — not the chance encounter with a hitchhiker he had initially described.

The next morning, he and Kildine Thiam returned to the hotel. Both admitted stealing Alicia's belongings — the suitcase and the money from her room. Both denied any involvement in the murder.

"The truth — we don't have it"

The trial opened on June 1, 2026, before the cour d'assises of Cayenne — France's highest criminal court for serious offences, composed of three magistrates and six jurors. Five days of hearings. Langhorne's chair was empty throughout.

Bernard Faye attended every session, wearing a t-shirt bearing his daughter's face. On day one: "I came to honour my daughter." ("Je suis venu pour honorer ma fille.") When crime-scene photographs appeared on screen, he turned to two women in the public gallery: "You think that's funny? That's my daughter you murdered."

Advocate general Gisèle Auguste on June 5: "Blood traces from the victim were found in his car and on one of his shoes (...). His guilt is established." ("Des traces de sang de la victime ont été retrouvées dans sa voiture et sur l'une de ses chaussures (...). Sa culpabilité est établie.") The prosecution requested 30 years against Langhorne, acquittal for Makkai, 4 years with partial suspended sentence for Thiam.

On June 6, the court delivered its verdict. Langhorne: 30 years. Thiam: 6 years with immediate remand — beyond what the prosecution had requested. Makkai: acquitted.

In the courtroom, Makkai addressed Bernard Faye directly: "They tried to make me the mastermind, but that's not the case (...) Your daughter was cowardly shot in the back of the head — even among us criminals, we don't do that in the street. Nobody deserves to die for €20,000." ("On a voulu me faire passer pour le commanditaire, mais ce n'est pas le cas (...) Votre fille a été abattue lâchement d'une balle derrière la tête, même chez nous les délinquants on ne fait pas ça dans la rue. Personne ne mérite de mourir pour 20.000 euros.")

Bernard Faye, to AFP after the verdict: "I will never forgive. We have been handed a life sentence too. But I have no hatred either." ("Je ne pardonnerai jamais, nous, nous avons pris perpétuité, mais je n'ai pas de haine non plus.")

His lawyer Me Michael Beulque: "There is frustration for Mr. Faye because the truth — we don't have it." ("Il y a de la frustration pour M. Faye car la vérité, on ne l'a pas.")

Two suspects freed eight days apart

Langhorne had been held in pre-trial detention since his arrest. On October 16, 2024, the Cour de cassation ordered his release after a court registry clerk sent a procedural notice to the wrong email address. He left French territory. Eight days later, on October 22, co-accused Flaviano Makkai was also freed on a separate procedural irregularity — though unlike Langhorne, Makkai complied with his judicial supervision and appeared at trial. The Faye family filed a corruption complaint following both releases. An international arrest warrant for Langhorne has been issued. He is believed to be in neighbouring Guyana.

Seventeen people were placed under formal investigation across the full inquiry — including Adaya, Langhorne, Thiam, their supplier, and three other mules recruited the same way Alicia was.

New petition pushing for emergency fixes to the Metz-Thionville-Luxembourg line. Thousands of our coworkers deal with overcrowded, delayed trains daily.

5,500 signatures needed. Deadline: 15 July.

https://www.petitiounen.lu/fr/petition/4103

A 21-month-old toddler was discharged from a French daycare with a blood alcohol content four times the legal driving limit—with no explanation on record.

The facility sits in Plailly, a quiet village of 1,800 residents in the Oise department, 35 km north of Paris. The area is best known for Parc Astérix, a theme park celebrating the famous French comic book. An affluent, historic commune.

March 17 Drop-Off

Parents left their daughter at "Les Petits Gaulois," a micro-crèche operated by the private group People & Baby. In France, a micro-crèche is a restricted daycare model legally capped at 12 children, designed around close individual supervision. Hours later, staff called the parents. The toddler "kept falling down" (« n'arrêtait pas de tomber »).

2.14 g/L — Source Unknown

The parents drove the child to a hospital. Toxicology confirmed a blood alcohol concentration of 2.14 g/L—the equivalent of four times the French legal driving limit. Medical staff formally certified the 21-month-old was "dead drunk" (« ivre morte »). The child received a two-day ITT (Incapacité Totale de Travail)—a medico-legal certification used in France to formally quantify the severity of injuries, even in non-working victims.

The hospital filed an official alert on March 20. The parents lodged a criminal complaint with the gendarmerie—the French military police force with jurisdiction over rural areas—in Orry-la-Ville. As of May 2026, the source of the alcohol has not been identified. Investigators have not ruled out ingestion of hydroalcoholic hand gel—widely present in childcare settings since Covid-19—which is sweetly scented and can be attracted to by infants.

"An Isolated Incident"

The Communauté de Communes de l'Aire Cantilienne—the local intermunicipal authority overseeing early childhood services in the area—ordered a temporary administrative closure. In their official statement, they declared that investigations "have not identified, to date, any element of malice or mistreatment by the professionals of the facility" (« n'ont pas permis d'identifier, à ce jour, d'élément de malveillance ou de maltraitance de la part des professionnels de la structure »). People & Baby echoed that line: « Il s'agit d'un incident isolé et aucun autre enfant n'est concerné » — "It is an isolated incident and no other child is concerned."

The authority confirmed the crèche will reopen June 1, 2026. The preliminary investigation remains open. No suspect has been named. No source for the alcohol has been found. The reopening has been announced regardless.

People & Baby: A Judicial Timeline

"Les Petits Gaulois" belongs to People & Baby, a Paris-headquartered private group managing 530 crèches across France, founded in 2004. What follows is not an isolated pattern.

June 22, 2022 — Lyon, Crèche Danton Rêve. An 11-month-old girl, Lisa, is dropped at the facility at opening time. Within 15 minutes, employee Myriam Jaouen—then 27—forces her to drink Destop, a caustic drain cleaner. Lisa dies. Jaouen searched on her phone "que faire quand..." ("what to do when...") seconds after the act. In April 2025, the Cour d'assises de Lyon convicted her of "tortures et actes de barbarie ayant entraîné la mort sans intention de la donner"—tortures and acts of barbarity resulting in death without intent to kill—and sentenced her to 25 years. People & Baby faced no prosecution. The group denied any link between Lisa's murder and its working conditions.

2021–2022 — Serial abuse across multiple sites. A 4-month-old found with bruises in Lyon (December 2021). A child with "bruising at the base of the neck, grip marks on the arm, intercostal hematomas" at a Villeneuve-d'Ascq facility (May 2021). An ex-director and ex-employee of the Lille site were convicted by the Tribunal de Lille for "violences physiques ou psychologiques commises sur des enfants en bas âge" and "privations d'aliments ou de soins au point de compromettre la santé d'un enfant." A Bordeaux facility closed by the préfecture in July 2022 for verbal abuse and a damning report from the PMI—the Protection Maternelle et Infantile, the French public health authority responsible for infant and maternal health inspections. In December 2022, a new complaint for maltreatment filed against a People & Baby site in Metz.

September 2024 — Les Ogres, by Victor Castanet. The journalist behind Les Fossoyeurs—the EHPAD exposé that brought down Orpéa—turned his attention to private crèches. He documents a system of moins-disant financier —deliberate cost undercutting of public competitors, accepting contracts at €4,000 per child versus €12,000 in public facilities, then degrading staffing and rations to preserve margins. Castanet also names Aurore Bergé, former Secretary of State responsible for early childhood, as having shown "leniency" toward the private crèche sector. Bergé was placed under formal judicial examination in October 2025 for suspected false testimony in connection with that sector.

November 8, 2024 — Criminal complaint by Anticor. The French anti-corruption NGO files a complaint in Paris against People & Baby for escroqueries et détournement de fonds publics—fraud and embezzlement of public funds.

November–December 2024 — Financial collapse. People & Baby enters procédure de sauvegarde accélérée (accelerated creditor protection) in November 2024. The investment fund Alcentra, which held the group's debt, becomes the controlling shareholder with over 99% of capital. In December 2025, the subsidiary People & Baby Développement is placed in redressement judiciaire—formal court-supervised restructuring—due to "un passif fiscal de plusieurs millions d'euros, hérité de la gestion de son ancienne direction." In spring 2025, 44 of its 530 French facilities are announced for closure.

https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2026/05/20/violences-physiques-et-sexuelles-dans-le-periscolaire-a-paris-vaste-coup-de-filet-policier-dans-l-affaire-de-l-ecole-saint-dominique_6691715_3224.html

On May 20, 2026, Paris police placed 16 people in custody in connection with alleged violence in the périscolaire program at École Saint-Dominique, a public nursery school in the 7th arrondissement. The 16 included ten contractual animateurs (activity supervisors), three Asem (Agents Spécialisés des Écoles Maternelles—nursery classroom assistants), and three REV (Responsables Éducatifs de la Ville—senior supervisors employed by the City of Paris). They were aged 18 to 68.

Alleged acts include rape and sexual assault on children under 15, sexual exhibition, slaps, arm-pulling, and verbal abuse. At least one woman faces rape charges.

One animateur had been flagged by the 7th arrondissement mayor's office in November 2025 following parental complaints. The CASPE—Circonscription des Affaires Scolaires et de la Petite Enfance, the local body overseeing school affairs—transferred him to the 15th arrondissement in December 2025 rather than suspend him.

Western France. Fifteen cemeteries stripped of their bronze saints. Eighty-four statuettes gone. Two men — both already convicted for the same type of crime — now facing court again in June 2026. Romania-Insider covered it from Bucharest: "Two Romanians accused of stealing bronze statuettes and desecrating 15 cemeteries in northwestern France."

Night of 15–16 April 2026

Mayenne is rural France at its most quiet. Hedgerows, stone villages, a church and a cemetery for every commune. Just to the west, Ille-et-Vilaine is the eastern edge of Brittany—Rennes at the centre, small parishes all around.

The first calls came in the night of 15–16 April 2026. Bronze Virgin Mary statues wrenched off headstones. Metal fixing rods cut and left on the gravel. Steles chipped where the ornament had been forced away. Communes in both departments reported the same thing, on the same night: same type of statue, same method, same rural setting. According to a detailed breakdown by info.fr (presumably AI generated news report) based on France 3 Bretagne and Franceinfo reporting, the Ille-et-Vilaine communes hit include La Guerche-de-Bretagne, Bais, Marcillé-Robert, Retiers and Rannée. In Mayenne, six communes were targeted with a further thirty-odd objects stolen, each valued at between €300 and €1,000.

At La Guerche-de-Bretagne, a small town of 4,500 in the Pays de la Roche-aux-Fées, officials found graves with their bronze statuettes ripped away and the metal fastenings violently sectioned—"signe d'une méthode rodée" ("the sign of a well-practised method"), as France 3 Bretagne described it.

Bronze at €6.17/kg

The motive is in the price. Between mid-October 2025 and mid-April 2026, the market price of bronze climbed from €4.37 to €6.17 per kilogram—a rise of nearly 41% in six months, according to info.fr citing France 3 Bretagne and FerrailleFinder. A TV piece later reposted on Dailymotion makes the logic explicit: funerary bronzes are now "particularly coveted and easily resold" once melted.

For families, each figurine costs between €300 and €1,000. For the thieves, a cemetery is a warehouse of anonymous metal weights. The method described by gendarmes is the same across all 15 sites: identify isolated rural cemeteries with little surveillance, go at night, work quickly down the rows, lever or cut the ornaments free, leave the stonework largely intact, load the car, drive to the next commune.

By late April, prosecutors were describing a single team "working" the region—not opportunistic vandals.

Two men, 84 pieces, 15 cemeteries

On 5 May 2026, gendarmes arrested both suspects simultaneously—one in Ille-et-Vilaine, one in Loire-Atlantique. Aged 32 and 34, both Romanian nationals, both placed immediately in pre-trial detention.

In custody, they confessed to all 84 thefts: 84 bronze statuettes and ornaments from 6 cemeteries in Mayenne and 9 in Ille-et-Vilaine, totalling €20,000–€25,000 in damage. Rennes prosecutor Frédéric Teillet specified that 14 individual facts were logged in Ille-et-Vilaine alone, involving 33 stolen objects, as reported by Le JDD. The Laval prosecutor's office—covering Mayenne—and the Rennes prosecutor's office are both handling parts of the file.

Europe 1 frames the charges directly: theft of bronze statuettes accompanied by criminal damage and desecration of graves across those 15 cemeteries.

"Someone went through our dead as if they were nothing"

Reactions from the ground are brief and hard. One mayor, walking his small cemetery with gendarmes, described sixteen graves damaged in a single night, all with the same ripped-off shapes. A family member told local journalists: "We came to bring flowers and found the statue gone and the metal bars cut off, like someone had dismantled a machine, not touched a grave." An official, quoted in a local paper: "This isn't just theft. It's the feeling someone went through our dead as if they were nothing."

Prior convictions and a wider pattern

Laval prosecutor Anne-Lyse Jarthon said in a formal statement that both suspects "avaient déjà été condamnés pour des faits similaires"—already convicted for similar offences. Dates and courts of those prior convictions have not been made public.

This is not the first time this exact pattern has appeared in French courts.

In 2023–2024, the Haut-Rhin department in eastern France saw hundreds of graves stripped. In April 2024, L'Alsace reported the dismantling of a cemetery looting network: four Romanian nationals arrested for stripping cemeteries across the Haut-Rhin and four neighbouring departments of bronze and metal ornaments. Gendarmerie cited over 310 identified victims, damage above €175,000, two open-air storage depots discovered, and the bronze driven across the border to be resold in Germany. Three of the four suspects were remanded in custody.

Earlier still: in 2012, a group of 13 Romanian nationals organised 8 robberies of metal recovery and recycling sites across France in two months, stealing 4.1 tonnes of metal. Sentences ranged from 8 months to 4 years. Separately, in 2011, French police had arrested 35 Romanians suspected of stealing copper from SNCF (the national railway), France Telecom and EDF in the Montpellier area—up to 450 tonnes over a year, valued at over €2 million. The axis across all these cases is the same: organised groups treating non-ferrous metal as a commodity to be systematically extracted, regardless of where it sits.

The phenomenon is not exclusive to any one nationality. A Belgian war cemetery was stripped of bronze for scrap in April 2025. German motorists are losing EV charging cables to copper thieves. When the metal price rises, the raids follow—across nationalities, across borders.

Around Rennes: a different kind of damage

On 20 April 2026, staff at the main cemetery of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande, just south of Rennes, found around thirty graves vandalised. Unidivers documented it on the ground: smashed steles, broken crucifixes, shattered Virgin statues, cracked plaques. In several cases, nothing of obvious resale value was taken. The cemetery was briefly closed. Mayor Sébastien Collet spoke of calling each affected family individually.

A separate file, but landing in the same place for the families involved.

The Le JDD report adds a harder number to the broader context: 843 anti-Christian acts were recorded in France in 2025, up 9% on the previous year, according to heritage protection associations. Not all cemetery damage is metal theft. Some of it is something else entirely.

Charges, June 16

The two men were formally charged (mis en examen) on 6 May 2026 and placed in pre-trial detention. They face vols en réunion (theft in concert), dégradations (criminal damage), and violations de sépultures (desecration of graves) across 15 cemeteries—the exact charges as confirmed verbatim by prosecutor Jarthon and reported by Le JDD.

A fast-track hearing at the Laval criminal court was attempted on 8 May but the file was not ready. The case is now set for 16 June 2026 in Laval. Under Article 225-17 of the French Penal Code, desecration of graves alone carries up to one year in prison and a €15,000 fine. Add theft in concert, property damage, and prior convictions for similar offences, and the sentencing range is substantially higher—especially if the court treats 15 cemeteries as one continuous campaign rather than a string of isolated incidents.

The resale chain for the 84 stolen bronzes has not yet been made public.

Her father came to court for the verdict and said he would never forgive the man behind the wheel.

Grenoble sits where three rivers meet the French Alps — a university city, an outdoor capital, a tech hub 100km southeast of Lyon. Late on the night of October 4–5, 2022, a patrol unit in the eastern suburb of Saint-Martin-d'Hères moved to stop a white Renault Mégane for routine traffic violations. The driver had other plans.

Ouadia Kaouass, 34, a maroccan national: a dozen prior convictions [paywall], active arrest warrants, a stolen vehicle, a firearm, cocaine and cannabis in his blood. Beside him: his girlfriend Inès. He floored it.

Kaouass was also under an active Obligation de Quitter le Territoire Français — a formal deportation order, known as an OQTF — at the time of the chase.

Five units. Eighteen officers. Four seconds.

Five patrol units engaged — eighteen officers total. As the chase tore through Grenoble, Kaouass fired four shots toward the pursuing cars, pinned one officer against a marked vehicle, screamed from the window — "Je vais vous tuer!" — "I'm going to kill you." The Mégane hit a dead-end near the central train station, on rue Henri-Tarze. Three officers opened fire. Nineteen rounds in four seconds, caught on a surveillance camera. One bullet struck Inès Hajji in the aorta. She died where she sat.

Kaouass ran on foot. Two officers were hurt in the arrest.

Six days before a jury, April 2026

France's cour d'assises — six jurors, three magistrates, the highest criminal court — opened hearings on April 20. Kaouass faced four counts of attempted murder of law enforcement officers. Maximum: life.

He spent most of the trial accusing officers of lying. On day five, the tone shifted: "C'est moi le seul responsable de ce drame. J'aurais dû m'arrêter dès le début." I alone am responsible. I should have stopped from the start. The four shots, he maintained throughout, were tirs de sommation — warning shots, aimed at nobody. His final address to the jury was, per Ouest-France, "souvent empreinte de victimisation et d'accusations." The last thing he told the court: "Dès le départ, mon seul objectif était de fuir la police."

Avocat général (Lead Prosecutor) Étienne Manteaux asked for 20 years. Per Le Dauphiné Libéré, he told the jury Kaouass had "repoussé toutes les limites, entraînant les policiers à tirer" — forced their hand — making him the real killer of Inès Hajji.

Monday, April 27

All four attempted murder counts were downgraded to refus d'obtempérer aggravé en récidive [paywall] — aggravated failure to comply, repeat offender. Intent to kill: not established by the jury. Twelve years of réclusion criminelle (jail). Eight fewer than the prosecution asked for.

Inès Hajji's father hadn't attended every session. He made the trip for the verdict. "Aujourd'hui, je ne comprends pas ce que faisait ma fille à Grenoble", he told the court. "Elle n'avait pas à y être." She had no business being there. He said he will never forgive Kaouass.

Inès would have been 22 this year.

The three officers who fired that night are not free of the courts either. A separate judicial investigation is still open in which all three hold témoin assisté status — a French legal designation sitting between witness and formal suspect. That case has no closing date.