For days, emergency services threw through steep and wooded terrain in France. They were looking for a man who is said to have shot two colleagues. Now the spook is over.
Nîmes (dpa) – The end of a nerve-wracking search: after days of escape, a suspected shooter who was wanted in France with a large number of people was caught.
The man surrendered, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Friday evening. The 29-year-old man is said to have killed his supervisor and a colleague in a sawmill in the small town of Plantiers in the Occitania region. Hundreds of emergency services searched for the man for days.
He surrendered without bloodshed, without violence, said the mayor of Les Plantiers, Bernard Mounier. The 29-year-old was extremely weak and emaciated when he surrendered, said Arnaud Browaëys, the commander of the search operation, the events in a press conference. It is assumed that he gave up because of exhaustion. He had given up all hope of being able to escape. He said “Sorry, I surrender”.
Investigators had last warned that the man could be dangerous and possibly armed. When he was arrested, he had no more weapons, but had shown the investigators his weapons hiding place, it was now said. He was found about five kilometers from the sawmill and was wearing camouflage clothing.
A search notice was published on Thursday. On Friday, too, around 350 rescue workers had thrown through the steep and wooded department of Gard. According to media reports, helicopters, police dogs and cartographers had also participated in the search. “We know that this is a man with weapons, that he knows how to use them and that one of the weapons in his possession is a particularly dangerous one with a range of several hundred meters,” warned the Nîmes prosecutor, Éric Maurel.
The wanted man was called by his father in an emotional audio message to surrender: “Valentin, it’s dad, I love you, we love you.” After he surrendered, he spoke to the family, said Mayor Mounier . They were relieved that there was no bloodshed.
The 29-year-old is suspected of killing his boss and a work colleague with bullets in the head in Plantiers. It could have been about a conflict with the employer, it said. The man had drawn the gun after a comment from his boss. The exact background was still unclear. In the media there was talk of a “manhunt in the Cevennes”.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210514-99-603002 / 3
