The 29-year-old gardener was attacked on Friday November 17 while he was working with two other colleagues by a septuagenarian. The trial was adjourned until May 16, 2024.
Mourad, a 29-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, was the victim of a violent racist attack on Friday November 17, 2023, early in the afternoon, while he was carrying out pruning work with two colleagues on the commune of Villecresnes, in Val-de-Marne, reports Street Press. “It went very quickly,” explained the gardener on BFMTV. It all started from the questioning of the pruners by a septuagenarian who was complaining about the parking of the team van. Quickly, the 76-year-old man began to insult the workers. “Oh, I’m at home, there, the donkeys. The bougnoules! I’m at home”, we can hear in the video broadcast by Mediapart.
Faced with insults, Mourad allegedly took out his phone to film the individual. A gesture which would not have pleased the septuagenarian who then took out a cutter and struck a blow to the neck of the young gardener. As La Voix du Nord relays, upon their arrival, the emergency services could only note a wound measuring around fifteen centimeters. Mourad was immediately transported to Créteil hospital where he was given 15 days of ITT. Recalling the facts to BFMTV, Mourad explains that he feared the worst and called his wife Émilie: “I told her: ‘You will say goodbye to our son’, because I saw myself leaving, the blood flowing and everything , I thought I was leaving.”
The attacker was quickly identified, arrested and placed in police custody thanks in particular to his license plate filmed by Mourad. Faced with investigators, the septuagenarian admitted to having had an altercation. While an immediate appearance was scheduled for Monday, November 20, the hearing was ultimately postponed to May 16. The 76-year-old man, who has nevertheless been placed under judicial supervision until then, will be tried for “intentional violence with weapons” and “racial insults”. While the Créteil public prosecutor’s office had requested placement in pre-trial detention, the judge of freedoms and detention therefore preferred to release the suspect. The Minister of the Interior, for his part, reacted this Tuesday to the affair, providing “all our support to the gardener who was brutally attacked”. “Racism and violence have no place in our society. Thank you to the police who intervened quickly to bring the suspect to justice,” Gérald Darmanin also declared on X (ex-Twitter).
