Six men were indicted for “voluntary homicide and failure to report a crime” following the murder of a forty-year-old during the Bayonne celebrations at the end of July, the prosecution announced on Saturday September 30.
These six men, aged 21 to 27 and some “already known” to the justice system, and a 33-year-old woman were arrested on Tuesday “at different points of residence” in the departments of Essonne and Loire-Atlantique, according to the Bayonne public prosecutor's office.
Transferred to the town of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, where they were presented to an investigating judge on Friday, five of those indicted were placed in pre-trial detention and another is now under judicial supervision, by decision of the judge of freedoms and of detention.
The judicial information, which is continuing, “must focus on specifying the degree of involvement of each person” and “the articulation of the facts which led to their dramatic outcome”, specified the public prosecutor in Bayonne, Jérôme Bourrier. The 33-year-old woman, indicted for “failure to report a crime,” was also placed under judicial supervision.
Caught urinating in front of victim's door
The events took place on July 26, during the first evening of the Bayonne festivals, one of the largest popular gatherings in Europe which recorded record attendance this year with around 1.3 million festival-goers.
Three young men had beaten up Patrice Lanies, 46, who had made a comment to them after catching them urinating in front of his door. The victim died of craniocerebral trauma after being kept in an artificial coma for nine days.
Investigators had released a sketch of one of the attackers, described as individuals aged 20 to 25, of athletic build, bare-chested at the time of the attack. On August 23, a 23-year-old man was arrested in Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées) before being “exonerated”, according to the prosecution, and released the next day.
