Morgan Keane Chasseur trial

[exile]

The original flying pig perhaps.

[exile]

On a serious note, it does depend on terrain. Here it would be quite possible to shoot horizontally and for the bullet to traverse probably as much as 2 km.

[Hotrodder]

flying pig.gif

[niemeyjt]

Apparently the distance was 75m

[Hotrodder]

I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn at 75m. But then firearms are not my strong suit. I'm better with an inherited portion of my mother's short temper and a baseball bat.

[niemeyjt]

Frenchman banned from hunting for life after shooting British man dead

A French hunter who shot dead a British man he mistook for a wild boar avoided prison on Thursday, disappointing relatives who wanted a tougher penalty.

Morgan Keane, 25, born to a British father in France, was mistakenly shot dead as he cut wood outside his home in the isolated hamlet of Garrigue, north of Toulouse on Dec 2, 2020.

His death on private land triggered outrage among locals and fuelled calls for tighter controls on hunting, which supporters insist is essential to keep France’s burgeoning deer and wild boar populations in check.

In court, the shooter, Julien Féral, 35, admitted to having accidentally killed Keane after opening fire despite having “not clearly identified" the target. Investigators concluded that he didn’t know the terrain and had been positioned in a poorly chosen spot with no clear instructions.

“There isn’t a day I don’t think about it, it’s marked me for life. I’m sorry,” Féral told judges in the southwestern town of Cahors at the November opening of his trial for involuntary manslaughter.

Féral was handed a two-year suspended sentence and banned from hunting for life.

The court also gave Laurent Lapergue, 51, the hunt leader, an 18-month suspended sentence and a five-year hunting ban for flouting basic safety rules during a “disorganised and intrinsically dangerous hunt”.

They said it had been so poorly planned and executed that “this tragic involuntary homicide was a foregone conclusion”.

The two men were also ordered to pay €15,000 in damages to Keane’s brother for “moral prejudice”.

The sentences were lighter than those called for by prosecutors who had asked for both men to spend six months in jail beyond their suspended sentences.

“The message has been sent that if you kill someone, there are absolutely no consequences,” said Peggy, a friend of Keane’s, who did not give her last name.

“I know he isn’t necessarily a danger to the public, but for me you have to send a message that killing someone isn’t nothing,” she added.

Ahead of the trial, a lawyer for the Keane family had accused the hunting party of playing down Morgan’s death because of his British roots.

“The fact that the Keane brothers’ dad was English appears to have made this homicide less serious in their eyes,” said Benoît Coussy, lawyer for Keane’s younger brother Rowan.

In court, he added: “Morgan’s life ended in the forest where he went to cut wood. But the story didn’t start there but several years before when Morgan’s father politely asked hunters to go elsewhere to shoot. He was a foreigner and at the same time not a hunter and the hunting world is quite ferocious. If you are not a hunter it means you are against hunting.

“Morgan and Rowan’s father asked the hunt to go further away, but they came back, bigger and better time and time again. Why didn’t they go to the valley where there are kilometres to hunt?”

In unusually strong words, Willy Schraen, president of France’s national hunting federation, FNC, had called for “an exemplary conviction” for hunters who failed “to respect elementary rules”.
Tighter rules on drugs and alcohol

The verdict came three days after Emmanuel Macron’s government pledged tighter rules against hunting under the influence of drugs or alcohol, boosting training and safety requirements.

The launch of an application providing real-time alerts to walkers and other countryside dwellers of active hunting zones was also announced.

Under the new rules, hunters involved in a serious accident risk losing their licences.

But ministers stopped short of implementing a popular proposal to ban hunting altogether on Sundays, fearing backlash from the influential hunting lobby - a move supported by more than three-quarters of French people, polls suggest.

Last week, Mr Schraen said he couldn’t imagine hunting-free Sundays “for a single second” and warned of a rural revolt in the event of a ban.

There are 1.1 million active hunters in France, according to the FNC, and some five million people possess a hunting licence.

While hunting accidents have declined in France over the past 20 years, there are numerous deaths from stray bullets every year. Eight people have died so far this season.

In another recent hunting tragedy involving a Briton, Jacqueline Taylor, 67, was shot dead by her French companion last October while accompanying him on a wild boar hunt in Brittany in what the local mayor called a “dumb and stupid” accident.

Taylor was fatally wounded after the loaded rifle of her companion of seven years, local Frenchman Pierre Philippot, 69, went off as he carried it on his shoulder without the security latch on. He faces manslaughter charges.

source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/ ... -man-dead/

[Blaze]

It's good that the hunt organiser was also punished. They must take responsibility for those on their shoot.

The problem is that the deer and sanglier populations have increased hugely over the years to the point of being a real nuisance.
Some chasse groups are very responsible and properly organised. Controlling those that aren't is the difficulty : how do you keep a check on alcohol ? The organiser can be held responsible, but is anyone actually going to do a spot check ? Highly unlikely.

Morgan Keane's death is unforgivable, but so is any death caused by a chasseur. Remember the British cyclist killed 2 years ago by a chasseur in the Alps ? My sister was in a train coming from Angers to Saumur when the train was shot at. Fortunately no-one was hurt. There are cases that don't seem to hit the headlines except perhaps locally.
A few weeks ago a father with his baby were sitting in their kitchen when a bullet whizzed by and buried itself in a wall - another chasseur.
The list is endless but nothing will change.

[Mangetout]

I recently drove to the shops in a small nearby town and on the way there was a hunt operating and the hunters were stood facing the right-hand side of the road ready to shoot at whatever was being driven towards the road. In other words they were preparing to shoot across traffic. Madness and terrifying.

[niemeyjt]

Driven shooting should be with a shotgun and used for flying birds. To be honest, that is no worse than what happens elsewhere. A shotgun is unlikely to cause a death except at extremely close range. A boy at school was hit from about 10M in the head and chest. Sure, he was scared for life, and took a while off school to recover, but AFAIK he is still alive 45 years later.

I think most, if not all, deaths will be from rifles being used indiscriminately. Rifles can kill at over a km - and waving them around and discharging them indiscriminately like with a shotgun is a recipe for disaster.

[exile]

Roadside shooting here is quite common - but the hunters always shoot away from the road; never across it.