A security guard at the entrance to the Knauf company in France where an HR employee was shot dead on January 26
Credit: SEBASTIEN BOZON /AFP
An unemployed engineer is suspected of attacking three human resources workers and a job centre employee in France this week, shooting three of his victims to death, public prosecutors have said.
The man acted with "no apparent motive," according to the public prosecutor of the southeastern French city of Valence, but all of his suspected victims worked in similar jobs and were linked to former positions he had held or his search for work.
"These actions do not seem to have a clear logic, except perhaps the link with employment," Valence’s public prosecutor Alex Perrin told reporters on Thursday.
Around 8.30 a.m. on Thursday morning, he walked into a job centre in Valence. He gave a false identity to the front desk, waited for his turn, then walked off to the nearest office, where he shot and killed Patricia Pasquion, a 53-year-old employment advisor.
He then drove to his former employer’s office and fatally shot the human resources director before escaping without taking his 9mm firearm. He was quickly taken into police custody.
"He fired one shot with real determination, the shot was not meant to cause injuries, it was clearly a shot to kill. Obviously he’s someone who has a certain ease with weapons," Mr Perrin said.
It was unclear how the man, who was not known by the police, obtained a firearm. Civilians in France are not allowed to carry weapons in public spaces.
The suspect, a 45-year-old unemployed engineer from Nancy, had been affiliated with the job centre he targeted until 2013 but there was no evidence he knew Ms Pasquion.
He had been an employee at the company he targeted next, waste collector Faun Environnement, from 2008 to 2010 before being fired.
He had specifically asked to see a manager there, and, when the manager was unavailable, he shot 51-year-old HR manager Geraldine Caclin in the head and in the abdomen before escaping. She later died from her injuries.
The man was later linked to attacks on two other human resources workers on Tuesday, one of whom died from her injuries. A woman was shot dead in her car as she left work more than 500km north of Valence, and another man survived an attack on his home nearby.
"Investigators are working on possible links given several elements and similarities that caught our attention, such as the modus operandi, the profession of the victims, or the proximity of time and place for the two acts committed in the Haut-Rhin," Catherine Sorita-Minard, a public prosecutor in northeastern France, where Tuesday’s attacks took place, said.
His DNA was found on the scene of the car park shooting, and the survivor later identified him as his attacker, a judicial source told AFP.
"He is silent, he is not talking about the facts at all, not answering questions," Perrin, the prosecutor, told AFP.
According to local press, the two victims targeted on Tuesday were linked to a redundancy scheme which had affected a company the suspect was working for in the 2000s.
Pôle Emploi, which coordinates job centres across France, closed its 900 branches across the country to the public on Friday in solidarity, and workers observed a minute of silence at midday for their murdered colleague.
"Due to the loss which has hit Pôle emploi following the fatal assault of a team manager, your agency is exceptionally closed to the public this Friday," a poster read at the entrance of the branch where Ms Pasquion worked.
Colleagues and officials paid their tributes to the women who were murdered.
"In the opinion of her colleagues, Patricia was a committed woman, devoted to her mission and to the job seekers she supported. All my thoughts are with her husband and two daughters," employment minister Elisabeth Borne said in a tweet.
The suspected attacker remained in police custody on Friday and investigations are expected to continue with autopsies of the victims and forensic analyses of the bullets to link the attacks.
Свежие комментарии