Luca Mariani, ex-hope of the Castres Olympique rugby club (Tarn), was sentenced on Wednesday by the Tarn Assize Court to 10 years’ imprisonment for having set a trap and beat up his rival, against a background of jealousy in love. On the night of May 16 to 17, 2019 in Albi, the rugby player had ambushed a young man who had visited his girlfriend. Pretending to be her, he had made an appointment with her at night and had hit her on the back of the head with a bottle of alcohol and then beaten her up before fleeing, after the intervention of passers-by. Seriously injured, the victim remained five days in a coma.
Aged 22 today, the young man still suffers from neurological sequelae: memory loss, speech difficulties, and has been recognized as 25% disabled. The 23-year-old accused admitted the charges and apologized during the trial several times, in tears. But he always refuted homicidal intent and premeditation. The general counsel, Sarah Gonzalvez, had estimated that the act was premeditated and had requested against him 10 to 12 years of criminal imprisonment. The verdict, which does not retain premeditation is “satisfactionIn this sense, rejoiced Laurent Boguet, one of Luca Mariani’s lawyers.
«As he had maintained for many years, he never subscribed to an approach that lived to prepare the killing of the victim.“, he reaffirms. The penalty is “commensurate with the violence of this attack and somewhat tempered by the young age of the accused“Comments Alexandre Martin, one of the victim’s lawyers.
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