Ex-sniper kills three at neighbor’s birthday party in France before taking own life

A former military sniper opened fire at a neighbor’s birthday party in a village in central France on Saturday night, killing three people before killing himself, local authorities said.

Police are still investigating the circumstances of the shootings in Vozelle at a family gathering to celebrate a man’s 20th birthday.

Around 9:45 pm (1945 GMT) on Saturday, the former soldier, 57, appeared on a path leading to the home and began shooting, local prosecutor Jerome Picques said.

The shooter, “armed with a rifle, opened fire several hundred meters away from his home towards that of his neighbors”, the Cusset public prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Sunday.

The victims include the young man celebrating his birthday as well as his father, 53, and godfather, 54. Four others were wounded.

“The most likely hypothesis” is that the assailant “turned the gun on himself after firing,” Piques said.

Michel Marien, the mayor of Espinasse-Vozelle, said the shooter was a former soldier who had taken part in “major conflicts, like Afghanistan, and as a sniper”.

“There was obviously an abundance of weapons in his home,” he told the local daily La Montagne.

The Cusset public prosecutor’s office said it could “neither confirm nor deny” the mayor’s statements.

The shooter, who used a pellet gun, was “a priori” unknown to the police and judicial authorities, said the prosecutor, adding that no further shots were fired.