• [DEVELOPING]Four dead and one critically injured in Alps Shooting
    14 replies, posted
[QUOTE]Three of the four victims of a shooting in the French Alps were shot in the head, a French prosecutor has said. One man, named by news agencies as Saad al-Hilli from Surrey, and an elderly woman were found dead in a British-registered car. A French cyclist, found close to the scene, was also killed. A British cyclist, an ex-RAF officer, discovered the scene near Lake Annecy. A second woman was also killed. [B]A girl, four, hid in the car for eight hours before being found by police[/B]. Annecy prosecutor Eric Maillaud said they were not looking for any more survivors. "It was clearly an act of extreme savagery and it was obvious that who did this wanted to kill," he said. The motive for the attack remains a mystery, he added. An automatic pistol was used, and the killer "targeted" the victims rather than indiscriminately firing into the car. Another girl, found shot outside the car, has been transferred to a hospital in the city of Grenoble where she has been placed in a medically-induced coma. She was due to be operated on again. The girl - thought to be seven or eight years old - was shot once, and had head fractures. "She suffered a violent attack," Mr Maillaud said. Both girls were under police protection in hospital. News agencies quoted sources as saying the dead driver was a 50-year-old man from Claygate, Surrey. Authorities have not confirmed this, saying only that they know who owns the car, and that the details matched the passport used to book a nearby campsite. However, they could not match the driver's face with those details yet. Mr Maillaud also said Iraqi passports had been recovered, and that the older woman had a Swedish passport. Formal identification of all the bodies was ongoing. The family had arrived on 3 September at the campsite and had expected to leave by the end of the week. Mr Maillaud said the British cyclist was passing along a road and saw a BMW with the engine still running. He saw the older girl collapsing in front of him, and helped her into a recovery position, then called firefighters. Mr Maillaud said "without doubt he saved the girl's life". He then discovered the other cyclist, who had overtaken him earlier, dead on the road. He broke the driver's window of the car, and saw three bodies inside. The younger daughter was concealed beneath her mother and was not found until midnight. She spent Wednesday night in hospital, with a nurse by her side all night. Police said they had spoken briefly to her. She was found "terrorised, motionless, in the midst of the bodies" after fellow guests at the campsite told officers the family had two children, Mr Maillaud said. [B]'Lengthy Delay'[/B] Many French web users have expressed incomprehension at the fact that the youngest girl was only discovered eight hours after police arrived. "How can you know that the occupants of the car were dead if nobody opened the doors for 8 hours?" wrote Maria on the website of the daily newspaper Le Monde. It was not until 23:00 local time (21:00 GMT) that police found out from the family's neighbours at the campsite that the family had a second daughter, and launched a search involving a helicopter and police dogs, one report said. Police had believed only one child was involved with the scene because only one child seat was found in the car. The investigators said there were several reasons why the youngest girl was not found earlier, including that police were told not to disturb the scene before the arrival of forensic investigators; and they did not want to compromise the ballistics investigation by opening the car doors because some of the windows had cracks made by the bullets. Earlier reports said a helicopter with thermal imaging was also used, but did not detect the girl, who may have been concealed under the bodies. Officials at the scene also tried to look through the car windows, but could not detect any movement. The dead French cyclist was identified as Sylvain Mollier. His wife contacted police after he failed to return from his ride.[/QUOTE] [URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19506853"]Source and Full Article[/URL] I'd hate to be the guy who stumbled upon the scene - or the little girl that might have spent eight hours under her mother's body. This is also really wierd - the shots in the middle of the head almost sound like a execution, so was this a hit job? Robbery gone wrong?
Might have been a hit or robbery as you said. It would make sense as it is a very desolate place in the alps
Wow I thought this would already have been posted, it's been the top story all day
That's horrible. The girl was in the car by herself the whole time while investigators couldn't come in to find her. Must have been traumatizing.
[QUOTE=smurfy;37563143]Wow I thought this would already have been posted, it's been the top story all day[/QUOTE] I guess most people on here from Europe would have been at school/college or work most of the day, and I guess it wouldn't be a big thing on the other news networks. EDIT: Yeah, after a quick check the only major US news site that has this on the front page is CNN. MSNBC and NPR don't even mention it, and FOX has it waaay down at the bottom. Two people from France being exposed to the hantavirus is higher up on the list.
Feel's like either a Toulouse or a mob hit. Seem's that the cyclist was passing and saw it and then got shot himself, bad timing if you ask me...
[QUOTE=madmax678;37563176]Feel's like either a Toulouse or a mob hit. Seem's that the cyclist was passing and saw it and then got shot himself, bad timing if you ask me...[/QUOTE] The question then is, why would there be a hit on a family of tourists? Unless there's something else going on here...
[QUOTE=madmax678;37563176]Feel's like either a Toulouse or a mob hit. Seem's that the cyclist was passing and saw it and then got shot himself, bad timing if you ask me...[/QUOTE] See what happens when you witness a shooting in the alps
[QUOTE=Camundongo;37563203]The question then is, why would there be a hit on a family of tourists? Unless there's something else going on here...[/QUOTE] Has to be something else, or it could just be another madman, who knows.
I just heard about this on the radio. I feel so sorry for the kid, she's going to have a rough time living with the memory of this.
My parrents just came back from their holliday there yesterday.
[QUOTE=PulpedFiction;37563491]I just heard about this on the radio. I feel so sorry for the kid, she's going to have a rough time living with the memory of this.[/QUOTE] I could see a 'Kill Bill' kind of situation with the little Asian girl in the movie, growing up and destroying the people who killed her parents
My school gives students the option to go to the Alps every year, this could've been them :tinfoil:
It took eight hours to get an investigator to look in the car?!? Wow, it's not like there's a killer who might be getting away or anything...
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