"He took a stone and tried to smash it on my head": a mayor of Charente attacked by a resident, an investigation opened

Another attack on a mayor. An investigation into violence against an elected official has been opened following the attack on the mayor of a small town in Charente, who was punched and threatened with a rock, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned on Friday, June 20, from the Angoulême prosecutor's office.

The incident occurred late Thursday morning in Vars (population 2,100), north of Angoulême, while the mayor was taking part in a weeding operation in the center of his village with his technical services, the elected official told an AFP correspondent.

When he started to pull up grass in front of a 46-year-old man, already known to the police, "he hit me with his fist, then he took a stone and tried to smash it on my head," continued the mayor, Jean-Marc de Lustrac.

A municipal policewoman blocked the arm of the attacker who was yelling, "Stop your work!" and then made him drop the stone, but it took the intervention of members of the Ruffec gendarmerie's surveillance and intervention squad to restrain the forty-year-old, who is hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. A psychiatric assessment of the suspect is to be carried out, the prosecutor's office confirmed.

"He's obsessed with weeding," said Jean-Marc de Lustrac, who had already been verbally attacked by the man last year, along with his services.

"He wants us to leave the grass. Not just in front of his house, but throughout the neighborhood. Since he's not working, he listens for the slightest engine noise and rushes at the slightest sound of a brushcutter," the mayor further explained to France 3 Régions .

"Fortunately, the police arrived quickly. The two officers ordered him to stop, and he put down his stone. They took him home to talk to him, and it started all over again. (...) They called for backup," the elected official explained.

The mayor went to the emergency room at Ruffec hospital where he was prescribed two days of temporary incapacity for work, before filing a complaint .

This attack shows that mayors "are on the front line to take the hits," he added.

The Center for Analysis and Combating Attacks on Elected Officials (Calae) recorded a 9.3% drop in attacks on elected officials last year, with 2,501 incidents recorded, or 48 per week, mainly against mayors and municipal councilors, after a 13.5% increase in 2023.

These attacks, however, play an extremely minor role in the explosion in the number of mayoral resignations - four times more during the current term than between 2008 and 2014 - primarily due to conflicts within municipal councils, according to a Cevipof study published Thursday and carried out for the Association of Mayors of France (AMF).