BAC shooting in Stains: 3D reconstruction belies the police account

16 August 2021, Stains, Seine-Saint-Denis. It is 1:32 am on Boulevard Maxime Gorki when a man sitting in his vehicle films a scene of rare violence.

The resulting video lasts less than a minute. It shows two men in civilian clothes firing eight shots at a vehicle that is apparently trying to get away from them. The vehicle comes to an abrupt halt at the fifth shot.

Having put away his weapon, one of the two shooters opens the vehicle’s door. The driver – Nordine A., aged 37 – can be seen lying across the front seats. His body is riddled with bullets. He has been hit in the back of the chest, the shoulder, the pubis, the right thigh, and the forearm. On his left side, one projectile has come to rest beneath his collarbone, another in his trapezius, and a third in the upper part of his thigh. He has multiple fractures and severe internal bleeding.

A passenger was sitting in the back. Merryl B., aged 39, was shot in the middle of the back. Her spleen is ruptured, a lobe of her lung is perforated, and she has multiple internal haemorrhages in her chest. The projectile lodged in her left breast.

The two men who opened fire are police officers from the Stains anti-crime unit (BAC, Brigade anti-criminalité): Jonathan F. and Valentin L. A third officer, Régis L., the patrol leader, took part in the operation without using his weapon.

In the hours that follow, the two wounded are taken in by the emergency services in critical condition. Their lives are in danger. After several operations, Nordine A. and Merryl B. survive their injuries. But they are left with serious after-effects, some of them permanent.

A few hours after the events, the witness’s video is shared on Twitter by the account L'Écho des Banlieues. The tweet is deleted the same day; it wrongly announced the driver’s death. The video, however, has already spread across social media.

A communications battle then begins around the case, in which the Paris police prefecture intervenes. Through its Twitter account, which has more than 500,000 followers, the prefecture’s spokesperson delivers the official account of events on camera. She reports a “refusal to comply with a police stop” (refus d’obtempérer), one police officer “struck” and another “dragged several metres” by the vehicle. Whereupon “both police officers used their service weapons.” In the days that follow, this account of events is widely relayed in the media. Two months later, a criminal complaint with civil party application is filed against the Paris police prefecture for “spreading false news.”

What exactly happened that night in Stains? Did the driver of the vehicle actually commit the offence of refusing to comply with a police stop? Were the police officers acting in self-defence when they used their weapons? In this video investigation, Index reveals a detailed reconstruction of the incident, which belies the police account.

To carry out this investigation, Index used the witness’s video to produce a detailed 3D model of the scene. This model precisely locates the positions of each of the protagonists throughout the sequence that led to the shots being fired at Nordine A.’s vehicle. By cross-referencing the data obtained through 3D modelling with the information contained in the case file – which Index was able to consult – it is possible to establish that:

The police check at the origin of the incident was irregular, as the BAC officers were wearing no visible external insignia attesting to their status as police officers. Consequently, when he manoeuvred to escape the individuals trying to immobilise him, the driver of the vehicle did not commit the offence of “refusing to comply with a police stop” as defined in Article L. 233-1 of the Highway Code (code de la route).

There is no legal basis to justify the shots fired by officers Jonathan F. and Valentin L. Aside from the fact that they were not wearing their insignia when they used their weapons – a condition stipulated in Article L. 435-1 of the Internal Security Code – the 3D reconstruction of the incident belies the reasons given by the police officers to justify each of the shots they fired.

Officer Valentin L. put himself in danger by climbing onto Nordine A.’s vehicle and perching on the door, with his legs inside the cabin and his upper body outside the vehicle. It was only after this baffling and perilous move that he was dragged several metres by Nordine A.’s vehicle as it reversed – a sequence that left him with only minor injuries to his legs.

None of the three police officers was struck by the vehicle.

On all eight occasions, at the moment they fired, neither the shooters nor the third officer was in the path of Nordine A.’s vehicle.

The last three shots fired by the police officers at the driver were fired while the vehicle was stationary and the driver was lying across the front seats.

More than a year after the events, the complaint they filed as civil parties against the BAC officers who shot them is still at the judicial investigation stage.

Meanwhile, the criminal proceedings brought against Nordine A. – for refusing to comply with a police stop, aggravated assault, endangering the lives of others, and driving under the influence of alcohol – moved considerably faster.

One month after the events, on 17 September 2021, Nordine A. was brought before the Bobigny court under the fast-track immediate trial procedure (comparution immédiate) and placed under judicial supervision. Initially scheduled for 19 November 2021, his trial took place on 18 February 2022. At its conclusion, Nordine A. was sentenced to the maximum penalty provided by law for refusing to comply with a police stop: two years’ imprisonment without suspension, plus €15,000 in damages to be paid to the police officers who shot him and his partner. He was taken into custody immediately after the hearing.

Through his lawyer, Nordine A. appealed. He was released on 11 April 2022 on medical grounds. At his appeal hearing on 7 June 2022, the judgement was finally postponed to 11 October 2022.

If his conviction is upheld on appeal, Nordine A. could be sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.

So far, the justice system has cast Nordine A. as the aggressor and the police officers as the victims. Yet the case is not over. On 8 September 2022, the investigating judge in charge of the proceedings in which Nordine A. and Merryl B. are civil parties finally decided to place police officer Jonathan F. under formal investigation (mise en examen, the French equivalent of being charged) for “intentional violence with a weapon by a person holding public authority.”

In 2017, the amendment of Article L. 435-1 of the Internal Security Code relaxed the conditions under which police officers may use their weapons, authorising them, under certain conditions, to fire at vehicles whose occupants are “liable, in the course of their flight, to cause harm to the officers’ lives or physical integrity or to those of others.”

Since then, the number of shots fired by the police at moving vehicles has risen sharply. According to figures from the IGPN (the National Police’s internal oversight body), +47% in 2017 compared with 2016, and +39% over a five-year average (2017–2021) compared with the previous five years (2012–2016).

Since the beginning of 2022, nine people have been killed by police officers firing at vehicles they were attempting to stop. In 2021, the toll was four deaths in similar circumstances. In 2020, police shots at moving vehicles caused one death.