Canada Global (Web News) Following a long-running land-related disagreement between neighbours, an 11-year-old British girl was shot and killed in her home’s yard in western France’s Brittany, according to the local prosecutor and a town official.
In the little town of Saint Herbot, next to Quimper, the family was enjoying a beautiful Saturday evening in their garden when a Dutch neighbour allegedly opened fire on them many times.
The prosecutor said that the girl’s parents were both injured, with her father sustaining potentially fatal wounds. The second daughter of the parents, who is 8 years old, was uninjured but in shock.
The Quimper prosecutor’s office released a statement stating that “initial evidence suggests the victims’ neighbour, a 71-year-old Dutch pensioner, suddenly appeared armed with a firearm and fired several shots in the direction of the victims… before retreating to his home with his wife.”
When a police negotiator convinced the Dutchman to leave his property, he turned himself in.
The local prosecutor stated that although the reason for the incident was not immediately evident, the two families had been engaged in a protracted dispute over a piece of land that bordered the two estates.
The British family has been in the hamlet for five years, according to Regine Guillot, secretary of Plonevez-du-Faou’s nearby town hall, and the Dutch neighbour is a reclusive man.
Guillot told Reuters that there were “neighbourhood issues, yes, a hedge, a field, but nothing more than that, not that we were aware of.” The community is in disbelief.
Calls to the British embassy in Paris were not immediately answered by a representative.
granted the seriousness of the situation, the public prosecutor in Brest has been granted the case.
A British youngster was one of four children and two adults who were stabbed in the peaceful Alps town of Annecy only days before to the tragedy.
