The court has rendered its decision. After the death of Morgan Keane, a 25-year-old Franco-British accidentally shot and killed, the hunter was sentenced on Thursday to a two-year suspended prison sentence and a ban on hunting for life. The director of the hunt during which the hunting accident occurred was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence and the withdrawal of his hunting license for five years.
On November 17, during the trial, the Cahors prosecutor had requested two years in prison for the author of the fatal shot and 18 months for the director of the hunt, including six months for each, as well as a ban on hunting in life and bear arms for five years in both cases.
Morgan Keane was killed on December 2, 2020 in the late afternoon. He was chopping wood on his land, in a hamlet in the town of Calvignac, when he received a bullet fired by an inexperienced hunter, who had taken him for a wild boar. The death of the young man has become emblematic of the difficulties of cohabitation between hunters and other rural people.
Posted in a wrong place
According to the conclusions of the investigation, the shooter, who came from the neighboring department of Aveyron to take part in the search, did not know the location and had been posted in an ill-chosen place without having received the necessary safety instructions.
Visibly moved and saying he was “sorry” for his gesture, this 35-year-old hunter admitted to the hearing that he had “not properly identified the target”. Testimonies from other hunters present in Calvignac reported several irregularities in the conduct of the hunt, which its director, a 51-year-old experienced hunter, nevertheless described as “under control” at the helm.
“Justice must pass. We are not above the law,” the director general of the National Federation of Hunters, Nicolas Rivet, told AFP. Audrey Tindilière, of the collective Un jour un chasseur, created by relatives of Morgan Keane to change the legislation on hunting, underlined the importance in her eyes of the definitive ban on hunting, regretting that that of carrying arms is limited to five years.