Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The 29-year-old gunman who 4 October shot a 15-year-old girl, Marina, in Petit-Lancy, leaving her in critical condition and in an artificial coma more than a week after the incident, had been fired 10 days earlier by the security agency Securitas, an investigation by the TSR public television show Infrarouge has discovered.
The agency says that the man was fired during his trial period for, reportedly, unsatisfactory work and behaviour not in line with their requirements, but his job did not involve being armed, nor did he have a gun license for his job. He appears to have acquired a personal gun license and to have obtained the gun from a dealer in Geneva.
The gunman also injured a young man when the bullet that lodged in Marina first passed through the youth’s cheek. The two were part of a group of youths who jostled the man, who had been drinking heavily, when they tried to insist that he leave the area near a school, after a dispute. He then went to his car, picked up a gun and took aim.
Once he realized the girl had fallen, he stayed at the scene of the accident and called police on his mobile phone to report the shooting.
Background, GenevaLunch
[Ed. Note: Geneva police have made a correction to their previous statement concerning the age of one of the victims and added new details surrounding the shooting. The second victim, police say, is a 24-year-old and not a 14-year-old as previously identified.]
Petit-Lancy, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 29-year-old man has been arrested after shooting two people, including a 15-year-old girl, during an argument that occurred around 19:00, Sunday 3 October in Petit-Lancy, a commune of Lancy in canton Geneva.
The 15-year-old is fighting for her life after being shot in the head and a 24-year-old man is recuperating after being grazed in the face by a bullet.
According to police, the argument started after the 29-year-old man who had been drinking heavily, accosted a group of girls at the Caroline school park in Petit-Lancy. The teens called two male friends who then confronted, and pushed, the aggressor.
The man, police says, felt “humiliated,” left and came back armed with a gun.
The group started to run after being confronted by the armed man who shot one time towards the 24-year-old man. The bullet grazed him on the cheek and then continued its trajectory and struck the 15-year-old in the head.
According to police, the shooter seemed to have realized what he had done, approached the fallen teen to help her and called police from his mobile phone. The 29-year-old then waited, by the girl’s side, for authorities to arrive.
The girl is in critical condition at the University Hospital in Geneva; the shooter faces attempted murder charges.
A gunman and six of the people he shot Monday morning in Bratislava, Slovakia, are dead, but police are releasing few other details. Fourteen people appear to have been injured in the shootings, in the capital’s Devinska Nova Ves suburban neighborhood, and bus service has been disrupted in the city.
Links to other sites: CNN, Slovak Spectator
The US Army major who went on a rampage and killed 13 people at a US Army base at Fort Hood, Texas 6 November has been charged with 13 counts of murder. Nidal Hasan has been in hospital since he was shot by police officers, and may be paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the wounds he sustained, according to his defense attorney who saw him in prison. AP, Reuters
