Police Officer Charged with Murder in Fatal Shooting of Homeless Man in Bobigny

The 32-year-old homeless man was shot by a 27-year-old police officer who found him squatting in his grandmother’s garage. The officer, who was not on duty, fired seven shots in the direction of the victim and managed to hit him five times. The young police officer was indicted for murder and placed in pre-trial detention on Monday, reports Le Parisien.

Amar’s family lawyer, Me Yassine Bouzrou, is preparing to plead "the racist, gratuitous and unjustified crime". "The profile of the victim shot dead in cold blood, the number of point-blank shots and the relentlessness against an unarmed person allow us to favor the thesis of a racist murder," explains the criminal lawyer, known for having defended cases of police violence such as that of Nahel, the young man killed in Nanterre in June 2023. At this stage of the investigation, the racist thesis is not established. "There are no witnesses on the spot, so it is difficult to say what words may have been used," acknowledges the lawyer, who is waiting to take possession of the file.

Amar recently arrived in France where he has family. However, this single man without children lived in great precariousness, details the lawyer, who specifies that the young man was homeless and spent the night "here and there, at friends’ or in makeshift shelters". This is how he began to squat the garage of the police officer’s grandmother, a few days before his death. She, worried by the suspicious noises coming from the garage, called her grandson for help. The rest is known.

Me Bouzrou insists on the racist character of the murder. "Seven shots to subdue a man who was not armed, it’s relentless. What can explain such hatred?" wonders the criminal lawyer. According to the agent who invokes self-defense, Amar "was being aggressive" and had "threatened him with an object he would have taken for a weapon", which prompted him to use his weapon. The object in question was a glue gun for DIY. The current political climate leads the police to "invoke the presumption of self-defense in all circumstances," denounced the lawyer, who requested the detention of the police officer.