The “probable scenario” of this tragedy is that of “a feminicide (...) against a background of marital separation” followed by a suicide, said the public prosecutor of Sarreguemines, Olivier Glady, who went to the scene of the incident.
The gunman, who was armed with an “automatic pistol”, had “no particular criminal record”, the magistrate added.
“A homicide investigation has been opened” and entrusted to the Forbach gendarmerie’s research brigade, which will try to clarify the “circumstantial aspects” that led to the tragedy, he explained.
Dispatched from the Paris region to take over from local negotiators, the gendarmes of the national gendarmerie’s intervention group (GIGN) had arrived in “about fifteen vehicles” in Folschviller, a small town about fifty kilometres east of Metz, not far from the German border, in the early evening.
The 50-year-old had been holding his ex-wife, whose age was not specified, in a suburban area since mid-afternoon.
The couple lived separately, and the tragedy took place in the home of the man’s ex-wife, where she lived with the couple’s children, two “adolescents”, the prosecutor said.
The man had however decided to “let them go” and they ended up giving the alarm.
The two children, who were taken to hospital, had reported that their father was probably “in possession of a weapon which would be a handgun”, Glady said.
Born in 1963, he claimed to have “resumed living together” with his former wife, according to the prosecutor.
The soldiers of the elite GIGN group, who were evidently unable to make him listen to reason, finally gave the assault at the end of the evening.
When they entered the house shortly before midnight, the gendarmes could only observe the tragic outcome of the hostage-taking: “the two people were discovered dead”, stated Glady.
“There was no exchange of fire” between the man and the gendarmes, the prosecutor explained.
According to the newspaper Républicain Lorrain, a security perimeter had been set up by the police in a radius of several hundred metres around the place where the hostage was taken.
The prosecutor stated that “no shots were heard” afterwards for several hours.
The mayor of Folschviller, Didier Zimny, who was present at the scene, told the Républicain Lorrain that he knew the kidnapped woman, a municipal employee, well.
The couple had been separated for “a few years”, the mayor said, explaining to the regional newspaper that he did not know the ex-spouse as well and did not know the reasons for his act.
On the Facebook page of Le Républicain Lorrain, an Internet user claiming to live “not far” from the scene of the tragedy said she had heard “a thud” twice, without any further details.
This violent incident is yet another continuation of the long list of feminicides and violence against women.
In 2020 alone, 90 women were killed by their spouse or ex-spouse in France, the lowest figure since statistics on this topic were introduced 15 years ago.
In 2019, 146 feminicides were counted by the government.
