Killing of Bilal M.: 3D reconstruction invalidates the police account

On the morning of 23 June 2021, four police officers accompanied a bailiff into a small apartment building in the centre of Pierrelaye (95), in the Paris suburbs. At around 9:45 am, once a locksmith had opened the door, the officers entered an apartment whose tenant, 34-year-old Bilal M., was the subject of eviction proceedings.

A few minutes later, Bilal M. was lying on the floor in the middle of his living room, handcuffed, with a bullet wound and the marks of a Taser shot on his body. He was unconscious and bleeding heavily. His death was officially declared at 11:01 am.

According to the autopsy report, Bilal M. was killed by a bullet in the back: entering at his left shoulder blade, it came to rest in his right lung. A trajectory that caused “major” injuries, leading to Bilal M.’s death “within a very short time”.

The officers involved – who are also the only eyewitnesses to the incident – have pleaded self-defence. They claim that Bilal M. brutally attacked them with a knife, leaving them no choice but to respond.

The preliminary inquiry was dropped on 4 February 2022. Pontoise prosecutors accepted the officers’ account, finding that “the police officer who used his service weapon on a single occasion acted in response to the unjustified and unforeseeable attack perpetrated by Mr [Bilal M.]”.

Drawing on all the documents in the case file, Index has reconstructed the events and built a 3D model of the premises and the movements of those involved. The reconstruction reveals major inconsistencies in the police account and casts doubt on the self-defence argument the courts have accepted so far.

According to those close to him, in early summer 2021 Bilal M. was going through a difficult period. The Covid-19 lockdowns had left him in an even more precarious financial situation. Following a break-up, Bilal M. had withdrawn into himself and was spending a great deal of time alone in his apartment. In the building, some of his neighbours complained of disturbances, while unpaid rent piled up.

Begun a year and a half earlier by the property’s owner, the eviction proceedings against Bilal M. were finally enforced on the morning of 23 June 2021. As the bailiff had requested police assistance, four officers from the Herblay police station went with him: Major Didier P., Sergeant Vanessa V., and officers Guillaume R. and Jack V. Bilal M.’s eviction was the second the bailiff and the four officers had carried out that morning.

Questioned by the IGPN, the police’s internal affairs body, after the events, the officers describe an “anxiety-inducing” atmosphere as they approached the premises. The bailiff had reportedly told them of rumours about the occupant facing eviction, who was said to be “mad”, even “schizophrenic”. While the bailiff remained on the doorstep, the officers entered the apartment “feeling in danger”, they report. Yet each of the four officers was equipped with their service weapon, bulletproof vest, and tactical gear. As the team advanced down the entrance hallway, Sergeant Vanessa V. reportedly drew her stun gun, or Taser, as a precaution.

Once in the living room, the officers reportedly found a man lying on his sofa, apparently dozing under a blanket. Major Didier P. is then said to have gone upstairs to secure the premises. He reportedly remained there until the gunshot. The three other officers are said to have positioned themselves around Bilal M., whom they suspected, they state, of pretending to be asleep.

In their separate interviews, all three mention that a phone on the edge of the sofa was playing “Arabic” music; officer Guillaume R., who fired the fatal shot, adds:

“... that music was strange, it sounded like religious chanting.”

Positioned between his two colleagues, Guillaume R. is then said to have

The account of what happened next, as given by each of the officers in their first interview, reveals glaring contradictions.

Guillaume R. states:

“... and then he brandished a large knife whose blade must have been at least 30 cm long. [...] This man started waving his knife in all directions, pointing it at me and at Jack.”

He even adds:

“... I saw him move towards Jack and point his knife at my colleague’s throat.”

Jack V. states:

“It was a kitchen knife with a white steel blade about 10 cm long […]. He started to get up, pointing the blade at Officer [R.] or Sergeant [V.]”

Finally, Sergeant Vanessa V. states:

“The individual […] pulled out a knife with a blade about 20 cm long and threw himself at me, trying to stab me.”

Each of the three witnesses, who are also the only suspects, thus gives a markedly different account of the type of weapon Bilal M. supposedly brandished in front of them, and of the direction in which he supposedly pointed it.

In fact, the IGPN investigators found no knife near the victim’s body. The only items found in the apartment were a 30 cm knife sharpener and a kitchen knife with a 13 cm white blade, behind the kitchen counter.

The officers say they moved these items themselves – here again, not without contradictions.

Sergeant Vanessa V., the patrol leader, is the only one of the three officers to mention in her interview a second knife, which she says she discovered under the sofa after using her Taser. Asked by the IGPN “What did you do with the knives?”, Sergeant Vanessa V. replies:

“At first we moved them away from the individual, then one of my two colleagues took them and put them behind the bar in the kitchen.”

As for officer Jack V., he states in his first interview:

“All of a sudden, I got up and I moved the knife further away into the kitchen because we didn’t know whether this man was faking it, and to avoid any risk of serious injury.”

Jack V. thus says he moved only one knife.

In this case, the knife or knives mentioned by the officers are the only material evidence of the threat Bilal M. allegedly posed to them before they shot him dead. Yet the officers’ statements about this knife or these knives contain multiple major contradictions: over the description of the knife Bilal M. allegedly brandished, over the gestures he allegedly made with it in hand, and over the actions and movements that would explain why no knife was found near the victim.

Rather than questioning the officers separately about the contradictions in their respective accounts, on the evening of the events the IGPN investigators organised a “re-enactment”. In one of the rooms of their premises, meant to represent Bilal M.’s apartment, the officers involved were asked to play their own roles in the incident, and to “position” the IGPN investigator playing Bilal M.

During this key stage of the proceedings, the contradictions between the officers’ versions disappeared, replaced by a single, shared account of events. This account was recorded in a report drawn up by the IGPN inspectors and documented with photographs.

One photograph in particular shows the moment when Bilal M. allegedly struck out with a knife sharpener towards Vanessa V. In response, Vanessa V. and Guillaume R. allegedly fired at him simultaneously: the former with her Taser, the latter with his semi-automatic pistol.

Later in the proceedings, a National Gendarmerie officer was appointed as the case’s ballistics expert. He relied on this same re-enactment photograph to assert, in his report’s conclusion, that “the statements [of the officers] present no incompatibility with the relative orientation of the weapons in relation to the victim.”

Working from this same photograph, Index reconstructed the presumed moment of the shots in a to-scale 3D model of the apartment. Once the positions of Bilal M. and the officers are reconstructed as they describe them, two major inconsistencies emerge.

First, the trajectory of the bullet that struck Bilal M. at the top of his left shoulder is downward. Bilal M. was 1.86 metres tall. He therefore cannot have been standing in front of Guillaume R. when the shot hit him. For a 9 mm bullet to pass through his upper body along such a trajectory, Bilal M. must have been positioned lower than Guillaume R.

Second, Bilal M.’s autopsy records two injuries caused by a Taser shot: one on his chest, the other on his right elbow. Yet the position of Bilal M. described in the re-enactment is incompatible with the injury to his right elbow. When the Taser hit him, Bilal M.’s right elbow must have been turned towards Sergeant Vanessa V.

To these two spatial inconsistencies, a third can be added, concerning the timing of the action.

According to the officers’ account, once Guillaume R. pulled the blanket off him, Bilal M., who was lying on his back, supposedly turned onto his stomach, plunged his left arm under the sofa to retrieve a knife sharpener, then got up brandishing it in the room, “waved it from left to right”, before pointing his weapon at Vanessa V. It was at that moment that the officers allegedly shot him.

Index carried out a dynamic reconstruction of Bilal M.’s alleged movements in a 3D model. According to this reconstruction, the minimum time needed to perform all of these movements cannot be less than five seconds. This is consistent with officer Guillaume R.’s own estimate of “a few seconds” in his interview.

Throughout this sequence of actions, the three officers would therefore have stood by passively, without reacting, until two of them simultaneously used their weapons against Bilal M.

When the IGPN investigators asked them whether they had given any warning before firing, the officers said there had been no time. “It was too fast”, Guillaume R. states; “It all happened very fast”, Vanessa V. repeats.

Yet nothing seems to explain why Vanessa V., who was aiming her weapon at Bilal M. while he was still lying on his back on the sofa, would have watched the whole scene unfold without ordering Bilal M. to stop or using her Taser before he was in a position to threaten her. The sergeant speaks of a “reflex shot”, even though by her own account she fired several seconds after perceiving the danger she describes. Data extracted from her Taser shows the safety had been disengaged 23 seconds before the shot.

Guillaume R., too, supposedly did not react to Bilal M.’s clearly threatening gestures until, “to stop an attack […] against [his] colleague”, he finally drew his weapon and “fired immediately”. Guillaume R. states that when he fired he “aimed [his weapon] at the upper body”. Likewise, nothing seems to explain why Guillaume R. – who at the start of the scene was leaning over Bilal M., still lying on the sofa – would have let the man get up in front of him, grab a weapon and brandish it at them, only to shoot him five seconds later, without warning, at point-blank range, in a lethal part of the body.

The police account is not only incompatible with the physical evidence from Bilal M.’s autopsy, it is also hard to credit given the timing of the action described. Everything suggests that things did not happen as the officers say. So how did Bilal M. die?

In their interviews, the officers mention several details, not taken into account in the IGPN’s re-enactment, which suggest the shot was fired before Bilal M. had actually straightened up.

In her second IGPN interview, Sergeant Vanessa V. states:

“When this man took the knife from under the sofa, he straightened up: he was braced on his feet, in the middle of a dynamic rising movement, but he was not standing.”

Asked about Bilal M.’s precise position when he allegedly threatened them with a knife, officer Jack V. states:

“I can’t tell you. I no longer remember whether he was half-crouched or standing.”

Major Didier P.’s interview adds another important detail. He says he was upstairs when the shot was fired and joined his colleagues moments after hearing it. He states:

“I asked [Guillaume R.] in which direction he had fired. He pointed to the backrest of the sofa, so I looked for the bullet without finding it.”

Finally, asked about his position at the moment of the shot, Guillaume R. states:

“I must have been less than two metres away from him.”

Fired from a standing position less than two metres from Bilal M., a shot towards the backrest of the sofa would have a markedly downward trajectory – consistent with Bilal M. being below him.

The digital reconstruction of all of Bilal M.’s movements, as described by the officers, supports the hypothesis that the shot was fired before the victim had got up.

Analysing the respective positions of Guillaume R. and Bilal M. over the course of the scene shows that the trajectory of the shot remains fully compatible with the injuries recorded at the autopsy as long as the victim is at the foot of the sofa or in the process of getting up.

As shown above, the trajectory is by contrast incompatible with Bilal M.’s injuries if he is standing in front of Guillaume R.

According to the officers’ statements, once hit, Bilal M. “fell back onto the sofa in a semi-seated position”.

But if Guillaume R. fired while Bilal M. was still straightening up, it is plausible that the impact knocked him back onto the sofa, onto his back, with his right elbow facing Vanessa V.

A Taser shot fired after the bullet struck would then be compatible with the two injuries found on Bilal M.’s body – on the chest and on the elbow – and with the “right-to-left” direction recorded in the autopsy report.

The study of positions carried out in the digital model brings to light a different sequence of events from the one the officers describe, in which Guillaume R. shoots Bilal M. while he is still getting up from the sofa, after which Vanessa V. fires her Taser at him.

On the available physical evidence, the 3D reconstruction cannot establish that this is actually how Bilal M. died. But this alternative hypothesis is entirely consistent with the autopsy findings on Bilal M.’s body – unlike the police account, which the courts have so far endorsed.

On 23 June 2021, a man died during an operation by police officers sent to assist with an eviction.

Bilal M. was killed by an intentional shot, fired by a police officer who states that he aimed at “the upper part of his body”.

In law, it is for whoever claims self-defence to prove that all its conditions were met: in particular, that they acted in the face of a real and present threat, and that their response was necessary, simultaneous and proportionate to that threat.

Far from providing that proof, the account the officers gave the courts is invalidated by the physical evidence in the autopsy report, as Index’s 3D reconstruction demonstrates.

In January 2022, the complaint filed by Bilal M.’s family led to the opening of a judicial investigation. Two and a half years after the events, it remains open.