Two men charged with attempted murder over French bus driver assault

French prosecutors on Wednesday charged two men with attempted murder after a bus driver was assaulted and left brain dead in southwestern France for refusing to let aboard a group of people who did not have tickets and were not wearing face masks.

Published: 8 July 2020 15:47 CEST

Two men charged with attempted murder over French bus driver assault

Four men set upon 59-year-old Philippe Monguillot in Bayonne on Sunday evening after he asked three of them to wear masks and tried to check another man's ticket.

The other two men have been charged with non-assistance to a person in danger and one has also been charged with attempting to hide a suspect, the local prosecutor's office said.

The four men made a run for it after the brutal assault and hid in one of the men's apartment, it added. Aged 22 to 23 and with police records, all have been placed in custody.

Assistant prosecutor Marc Mariee denounced an “extremely violent” attack on Tuesday after requesting that charges be filed.

“There were insults and then shoving. The bus driver was pushed out of the bus. Two individuals then violently kicked and punched the upper part of his body, including his head,” he told a press conference.

The assault on the father of three prompted an outpouring of indignation by his colleagues in Bayonne, many of whom are refusing to work until his funeral.

His was unconscious when emergency services arrived.

“It's not my father breathing, it's the ventilator. We know that it's over,” his 18-year-old daughter Marie told the Sud Ouest newspaper.

Face masks remain mandatory on public transport in France to slow the COVID-19 outbreak, which has claimed nearly 30,000 lives.

The driver's family has organised a silent march in his honour for Wednesday evening, departing from the bus stop where the assault took place.

Unions have asked transport networks across the country to stop at 7.30pm time and observe a minute of silence.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.