The former husband of a policewoman who was killed on the street with a “machete weapon” in a village in Savoy, who has been wanted since Thursday, was arrested on Friday morning.
• Also read: A police officer was killed on the street and her ex was wanted
“He was only arrested this morning at 10.10am” in Arvillard, a town near La Croix-de-la-Rochette where the events took place, Chambéry prosecutor Pierre-Yves Michau told AFP. The man was arrested “without difficulty” and questioned as part of the investigation launched in the Chambéry research department into the “assassination”.
His vehicle was spotted Thursday in the parking lot of a Buddhist meditation center, but the search, for which “very significant resources were mobilized,” yielded no immediate results, he said.
“This morning (Friday) they resumed and he was arrested in close proximity to his vehicle. There were no difficulties,” he said.
According to a source close to the investigation, the suspect was arrested by gendarmes from the PSIG (Gendarmerie Monitoring and Intervention Unit) as part of a search operation led by the GIGN.
The murder of the 42-year-old police officer happened on a public street on Thursday morning when she was off duty. The victim had just dropped off one of her children at the daycare center in the village of La Croix-de-la-Rochette, near Chambéry, where she lived, and was walking home, accompanied by her three-year-old son.
The attacker had “delivered more than ten violent blows with a weapon that, according to the subsequent findings of the coroner at the scene, could be a machete weapon,” said Mr. Michau. A source familiar with the matter had previously spoken of a “blunt object”.
The woman died shortly thereafter, despite the quick intervention of rescue workers. His autopsy will take place on Friday morning at the Grenoble Forensic Institute.
The man suspected of this “probably premeditated” murder is the victim’s former husband, with whom she had two children and from whom she divorced in 2021. The couple resided in Nice at the time, according to prosecutors.
According to him, the man was convicted in 2020 by the criminal court in Nice for failing to comply with a protection order.
Since her transfer to Savoie, where she worked as a police officer at the Chambéry police station, the victim had lodged a complaint of non-payment of alimony, but “no further court proceedings in Savoie for violence, harassment or any other criminal offense had been instituted against the defendant”, specifies the accusation.
The announcement of the murder was received with great emotion in the ranks of the police.
“Fear and deep sorrow at the killing of an off-duty police officer who was posted to Chambéry (73) this morning while she was taking one of her children to daycare. “The entire state police is shaken by this drama of extreme violence,” the state police responded to X (formerly Twitter).
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Thursday expressed his “great sadness at the announcement of what, according to the first elements, would be a femicide”.
“We are very shocked,” Fabrice Galatioto, national secretary of the southeast zone of the Unité SGP-Police union, told AFP. “She herself has dealt with complaints and files on her behalf, including domestic violence. “She has helped defend society and in the end she becomes a victim,” he lamented.
The number of femicides in France increased by 20% in 2021 compared to the previous year. According to the latest Home Office figures, 122 women have been killed at the hands of their spouse or ex-spouse.