Vevey court: police officer sentenced to attempted murder

A Vaudois gendarme was sentenced on Wednesday to one year in suspended prison sentence for attempted murder and abuse of authority by the Vevey court. He had shot a pedestrian whom he had wrongly judged as threatening.

(Keystone-ATS) Revealed by 24 hours, the verdict was confirmed Thursday in Keystone-ATS by lawyers of both parties. The case dates back to the early morning of November 1, 2022. After an altercation in front of a nightclub in Sion, where shots were fired, a person is on the run. A track leads to chexbres (VD), where there is a patrol of two police officers.

At the same time, an apprentice baker went to his work, headphones in the ears. The gendarme driving the car believes that it could be the fugitive and decides to control it. But when the young man puts his hand in his pocket to reduce the sound of his music, the policeman feels in danger: he draws his pistol and shoots twice on the apprentice baker, without however touching him.

Tuesday before his judges, the policeman had recognized “an error of appreciation”. This was due, according to him, “to the particular context” of that night, to the tension linked to the search for a dangerous fugitive. He explained that he saw this pedestrian, his face hidden by a hood, to take out “a black object” of his pocket and raw that it was a weapon. “Everything went very quickly. I was suddenly in danger of death and I had to defend myself, “he said.

Victim status

Lawyer of the former apprentice, who is now trying to rebuild himself, Habib Tabet says he is “extremely satisfied” with a verdict which “finally recognizes the status of victim” to his client. Referring to the judgment, he noted that the policeman certainly had the right to be on the alert and to carry out a check, but that he acted in a “totally disproportionate” manner by making use of his weapon.

If he did not intend to kill, he could not ignore the risk he had to run to the young man, adds Me Tabet, questioned by Keystone-Ats. And to note: “It was Providence that saved my client. “According to him,” when one is a police officer, being under pressure is not an excuse. You have to know how to keep your nerves. “He said he grew” the intellectual rigor “of the court but also” his courage “, recalling that it is” rare “that a police officer is condemned.

Probable appel

For Stefan Disch, lawyer for the gendarme, “the court went far beyond what the public prosecutor had requested, since this authority concluded that a sentence of authority was suspended, which is already very rare and worrying,” he said.

And to add: “An error on the person is a fortunately exceptional situation, and the police do everything to avoid it. Here there was an unfortunate chain of circumstances and never, of course, the agent wanted or imagined making use of his weapon on a harmless person. The prosecution understood this well, ”abandoning the accusation of attempted murder.

“An appeal will certainly be filed, but the final decision will naturally be taken when we have full motivated judgment,” says Me Disch.