Singer Kendji Girac, who has become a popular figure and a successful singer since his victory in the show “The Voice” in 2014, was seriously injured by gunshot on Monday April 22 in Biscarosse (Landes). He is still hospitalized Monday evening at the Haut-Lévêque university hospital center in Pessac, southwest of Bordeaux.
The Mont-de-Marsan prosecutor, Olivier Janson, announced in the evening the opening of an investigation into attempted manslaughter due in particular to the confusion of the first testimonies collected, "both on the circumstances of the facts and on the exact location where they occurred” and the disappearance of the weapon, which has since been found “at [the] indication of members of his family.”
The police were called Monday morning around 5:30 a.m. to the city’s Travelers area. When help arrived, the 27-year-old singer presented “a gunshot wound to the chest” and “protruding at the back,” Mr. Janson wrote in a press release. Sources close to the investigation and the Landes firefighters indicate that his life was never in danger, contrary to what initial sources close to the case declared.
His state of health did not allow him to be interviewed, he "briefly" informed the investigators who came to his bedside "that it was a shooting that he described as accidental, that he would have -even caused by handling an 11 [mm caliber automatic pistol, purchased shortly beforehand,” according to the magistrate. However, he did not explain “neither the circumstances of this purchase nor the reasons which would have led him to handle this weapon in the middle of the night”, he adds. According to a source close to the case, Kendji Girac told emergency services that he had bought the weapon in a flea market.
“An accident happens at any time.”
The investigators collected the “testimony of his partner”, Mr. Janson also said, specifying that the singer’s hearing “will be carried out as soon as his state of health allows it”. “It’s not a settling of scores, it’s an accident. He played with the thing, and bam! “, Emilio, a sixty-year-old who introduced himself as his uncle, told AFP. “We were playing guitar, quietly. An accident happens anytime, at any hour,” he added, referring to an evening the day before.
Kendji Girac had been present in Biscarrosse for several days, specifies a source close to the town hall. The camp where the events took place, bringing together “eighty caravans on the area, all belonging to family members or relatives” of the singer, according to the prosecution, is located on the D 652 departmental road.
Originally from Périgueux, in Dordogne, Kendji Maillé, his real name, was born into a family of Catalan gypsy origin. He was made famous "a little by accident", in his words, when in August 2013 his uncle published a video in which he covered Gims' hit Bella on the guitar. He then won “The Voice” and sold millions of records, notably driven by his hits Color Gitano and Andalouse, seen hundreds of millions of times on YouTube.
In addition to the release in 2022 of his fifth album, entitled L'Ecole de la vie, Kendji Girac participated in the tours of Les Enfoirés, a troop of stars raising funds for Les Restos du coeur, of which he became one of the pillars.
