Death of Gaye Camara: the self-defence thesis called into question
Published on
In partnership with Disclose, Index reconstructed the events that led to the death of Gaye Camara, aged 26, during a police operation in January 2018. Backed by 3D modelling, our investigation calls into question the official thesis: that the police officer who fired the shot acted in self-defence.
- Incident date
- Location
- Épinay-sur-Seine (France)
- Victim(s)
- Gaye Camara
- Consequence(s)
- Décès
- Force(s) involved
- Police nationale
- Methods employed
- Arme à feu
- Theme(s)
- Partenaire(s)
- Disclose
16 January 2018, Épinay-sur-Seine. At around 11:55 pm, a vehicle crashes into a fast-food restaurant on Rue de Paris. Its driver – Gaye Camara, a 26-year-old Black man – has just been shot in the head while trying to evade arrest by the police. He dies the following day.
An inquiry is opened, but it ends in a dismissal of the case (non-lieu). The police officer who fired the shot claims self-defence: he says he fired as the vehicle was “charging at him”.
No reconstruction of the events was carried out during the judicial investigation. In partnership with the investigative media outlet Disclose, we conducted a counter-investigation based on 3D modelling. Our findings cast doubt on the self-defence claim of the police officer under investigation.
Conclusions
According to the available data, the police officer who shot Gaye Camara in the head was between 5 and 9 metres from the vehicle when he opened fire on the windscreen.
Moreover, at the moment he fired, the police officer was not facing the vehicle: the trajectory of his bullet forms a 38º angle with the vehicle’s longitudinal axis.
From a legal standpoint, these two points are liable to call into question whether self-defence applies in the killing of Gaye Camara.
Indeed, for the self-defence clause to be upheld, the law requires three conditions to be met: the response to a real attack must be necessary, simultaneous, and proportionate. The shooting distance, the fact that the police officer was not facing the vehicle when he fired, and the fact that he fired a shot that would in all likelihood be fatal to the driver are all elements that call into question the characterisation of the officer’s act as self-defence as defined by law.
Expert report
To complement our investigation, we are publishing an independent expert report in PDF format, which provides further details on our findings and on the method used.