A 36-year-old Albanian citizen killed his 30-year-old colleague on Thursday in Brest (Finistère) before turning his rifle on him. The couple’s two children, unharmed, were being cared for by Child Welfare, the district attorney’s office announced Friday.
Warned around 15.30. by a resident who heard an explosion in his neighbor’s apartment, firefighters forced open the door and found two bodies: a woman and her partner, both Albanians who legally lived in France.
“When sent to the scene, investigators from the Brest central police station quickly noted that it was a female murder, followed by a suicide,” said Brest prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger, in a press release. A “rifle type” weapon was found near the man’s body.
The couple’s two young children were not in the apartment at the time of the tragedy.
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Psychological violence
On October 23, the mother reported to Brest police officers “acts of psychological violence” committed by her partner, reporting “pathological jealousy” and “coercive control”, “while excluding physical violence”, according to prosecutors. He has not filed a complaint, but a preliminary investigation has been opened.
The victim has left home with her children and is being treated at an emergency accommodation centre. But he did not want to be given “dangerous calls”, and said he wanted “most importantly his partner to get treatment”, according to the judge.
The mother “had apparently just returned to her marital home, with her children, when the tragedy occurred”, he added.
The number of marital homicides of women increased by 11% between 2023 and 2024 with 107 women murdered by their partners or ex-partners, i.e. one death recorded every three days. In total, police recorded 138 deaths due to intimate partner violence last year, including 31 men (+35% in one year), according to an annual national study conducted by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
