Lake Annecy: Killings in French idyll
The background
French police are investigating after four people were killed in the Alps. Three members of a British family holidaying near Lake Annecy in France, named as Saad al-Hilli from Surrey, his wife and mother-in-law, were shot dead, along with a French cyclist thought to have been a witness.
The family’s seven-year-old daughter is in a critical condition with a gunshot wound and head injuries; another daughter, aged four, spent eight hours hiding in the car containing the bodies of her parents.
There are various theories circulating as to the motive for the killings. According to the BBC, French police are considering the possibility of a family feud over money.
Killings cause French soul-searching
“As a colleague opined apologetically this morning, the murder of foreigners like this on French soil, particularly en famille, offends something deep in much-wounded French pride,” wrote Flachra Gibbons in The Guardian, reporting that there is a sense of collective guilt in France in the wake of the killings. According to Gibbins, this is partly due to the murder of another British family in the Alps 60 years ago that plagued police.
Violent underbelly of France on show
“Whatever turns out to be the explanation for the killings near the village of Chevaline, such events show that France is not immune from the disturbing realities of modern society,” wrote Colin Randall in The Telegraph. Rural France may seem like a bucolic idyll, but dangers lurk beneath the sun-dappled surface, particularly taking into account other recent violent crimes.
Ongoing trauma for four-year-old daughter
Consultant clinical psychologist Emma Citron told the BBC that the four-year-old girl who spent eight hours hiding with her family’s bodies was likely to need long-term care after her ordeal: “It will take years and years of trained professionals helping her. She’s at a very formative age where she’s very dependent on her loved ones for her care and personality.”
Why wasn’t child discovered sooner?
“We had instructions not to enter the car and not to move the bodies. Firemen, technicians and doctors all looked into the car through the holes in the windows but none of them saw the girl,” Lieutenant Colonel Benoit Vinnemann told The Guardian.
Watch a report on the Alps killings below.
