Le Parisien: 75-year-old armed robber killed in Normandy: "He spoke for awhile of committing suicide"

A very rough translation:

"He was depressed. He spoke for awhile of committing suicide. I think that he did not have the courage to do it. This is the method that he chose to make it happen." A day after the terrible spree of the 75-year-old retiree, gunned down after having held up a casino in Trouville, his wife estimated Friday that the criminal behavior of her husband had been the act of a depressed and suicidal man.

She maintained that she "never saw him with a gun" and did not know "that he had one." According to her, her husband, the father of three children by another woman, "had some neurological problems," but the "representative" of his pension had "stopped his treatment."

He did not shoot just before being neutralised

The public prosecutor's department of Caen has given new information on the sequence of events: the man had fired several times at law enforcement during his wild ride. But contrary to what had at first been announced, he was not shooting at the gendarmes just before being neutralised. "He threatened the gendarmes, but he did not fire," specified Gérald Lesigne, the assistant public prosecutor for the court of appeals of Caen on Friday.

The testimony is "precise", according to the prosecutor

"Yesterday there was information that was advanced in the framework of the story that did not originate from the police regarding the cause of the fatal shots. Now we have the testimony of the servicemen. It is very precise. He made threats but he did not fire in the direction of the gendarmes," clarified the magistrate.

Results of the autopsy expected in the early afternoon

So the elderly man had repeatedly shot at law enforcement during his flight, but only threatened the gendarmes, without firing anew, after the vehicle he was driving had been crashed into by them.

According to the public prosecutor, the gendarmes had shot out two windows in his vehicle, then shot him in the shoulder and the left arm, the only targets available to them other than the head. They then took the elderly man out of the car. Attempts to resuscitate him failed. Six cartridges in total were retrieved from the proximity of the vehicle: two bullets had shattered the windows, two had struck the perpetrator, and two were "lost."

Hit in the shoulder and the chest

The robber was shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the chest, "areas that normally are not lethal," according to the public prosecutor. "It is very likely that he was killed by these gunshots, but we must have an autopsy to officially determine the cause," specifies Gérard Lesigne. The results of the autopsy are expected early in the afternoon.

It all commenced at 2:40 pm. The grandfather arrived at the casino Barrière, a cap on his head and a scarf around his face. When "the guard confronted him, the robber shot at him." He then launched into a messy and bloody escape during which he wounded a gendarme and took a hostage. It ended in tragedy.

Read the article in the original French here.

Trouville, France