Toulouse: reprieve for the HLM security guard who attacked a young man from Mirail
The ex-HLM security guard who had hit a young man from Mirail was given a suspended sentence. The prosecution had demanded his placement under an electronic bracelet for eight months.
The case will not have dragged on, a sentence placed in police custody, the ex-agent of GITeS (Inter-district grouping of tranquility and safety) compared this January 20 in court for having molested a young man from Mirail. This short, muscular man had punched this 18-year-old kid in the face in the hall of a building. He had been dismissed after an internal investigation by this private company fighting against acts of incivility in HLM bars.
On the stand, he calmly delivered his version of the facts, oscillating between a certain form of repentance and an attempt to “charge” his victim. “It was a rash act. I have no excuse. But I want to make it clear that he said he was going to put a bounty on my head and my days were numbered.” At the end of his testimony, he nevertheless apologized directly to the young man. He had been sentenced last July for aggravated violence against a GITeS employee. Me Jessica Guy, her lawyer, was clearly not satisfied with the turn of events summed up by the hearing: “I have the feeling of being on the defense today when I am on the side of the civil party! The reality is is that he was arbitrarily detained and punched in the nose!”
Frédéric Cousin, the representative of the public prosecutor, did not find any excuses for the defendant and requested his placement under an electronic bracelet for a period of eight months, arguing his duty to set an example. Me Guillaume Léguevaques, the security guard’s lawyer, then recalled that we were judging a man and not an institution and that a sentence could not have the value of an example… Finally, his client was sentenced a three-month suspended prison sentence and will be able to continue a job in the field of security.