The funeral of Aurélie Pardon, one of the two teachers shot dead on July 5 near Tarbes, took place on Friday in Barbazan-Dessus (Hautes-Pyrénées), in the presence of nearly 300 people.
Aurélie Pardon, 32, lived in Barbazan with her husband, from whom she was in the process of divorcing. He is suspected of being the author of the double murder and wanted on both sides of the Franco-Spanish border.
In Spain, the Civil Guard lifted the “special device” deployed to find the suspect on Tuesday evening, but the investigation is continuing. On the French side, the prosecutor of Pau, Cécile Gensac, questioned on Friday by AFP, reaffirmed “that we do not know” whether the suspect “is still alive or dead”.
A call for witnesses broadcast
Aurélie Pardon’s brother said at the funeral that the family would watch over the children of the slain teacher, aged two and five. The funeral of the other victim, Gabriel Fourmigué, took place on Tuesday in the strictest privacy, according to a relative, in Condom in the Gers, where he was from.
A call for witnesses, with the photo of the man “suspected of being the perpetrator”, was released on July 8 by the gendarmerie. The motorcycle of this worker from a factory in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, manufacturing helicopter engines, was found on July 6 on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, in Jaca, Aragon.
Gabriel Fourmigué, 55, and Aurélie Pardon, were respectively physical education and French teachers at the Desaix college, in the city center of Tarbes. The two teachers had “become romantically closer in recent weeks during a school trip,” said the prosecutor of Tarbes.
Judicial information, retaining the qualification of “assassinations” had been opened and the file transferred to the prosecution of Pau.