2023-09-27 11:21:00
At the very beginning, he is six meters from me and holding a hostage. He turned his back to me, so he didn’t see me. He is hooded and carries a riot gun. He turns around and notices my presence. He aims the gun and takes aim at me. There is a moment when nothing happens. I shout at him: ‘Don’t shoot.’ But he shoots, and then leaves, pushing the hostage in front of him.”
It is September 27, 1985, a Friday, at the Delhaize in Braine-l’Alleud. It’s 8:10 p.m. Thirty-eight years have passed. Doctor Devriendt has not forgotten anything.
Death of Ghislain Platane
He was then a young doctor of 32 years old. After firing, the author heads towards the exit with the young boy whom he pushes in front of him. Seeing them leave, Jacques Devriendt goes towards the crates where he hears moaning. A client lies in a pool of blood, “in a state of apparent death”.
A projectile tore the right subclavian artery. The doctor understands that there is nothing more to do. Jacques Devriendt nevertheless leans down and tries to revive him, in vain. This is Ghislain Platane. Ghislain was 37 years old.
After killing three customers in Braine-l’Alleud, the killers went to rob the Delhaize in Overijse, 18 km away, leaving five other victims there. And, in six weeks, eight more at Delhaize in Aalst.
Today is a birthday. Dr Devriendt agreed to return to the evening of September 27, 1985 when he escaped certain death. Who were the killers? Who was the one who shot him?
On September 27, 1985, the Delhaize in Braine-l’Alleud was the target of a terrible attack killing three people ©BELGA/VERGULT
20 h 07
On this Friday, many are doing their weekend shopping. Even today, Jacques Devriendt shudders with fear at the idea that he could have made his own with his wife and their two children. “But we were late and in the end, I preferred to go alone.”
On the road, coming from Waterloo, from the Chenois district, he overtook a second-hand dealer’s van, that of the Djuroskis. The father, Bozidar, was shot dead at the wheel of the vehicle. His son Bernard, seriously injured in the parking lot and operated on by Dr. Wynen, escaped by a miracle.
It is 8:07 p.m. As Jacques Devriendt was bringing back some trash, he was waiting at the counter, near the cash registers, for an employee to come to meet him. Suddenly, screams, explosions and three armed men burst in. Two masked – including one of a carnival mask representing Chirac.
The third, hooded, holds a young boy hostage. The two masked people head towards the manager’s office where the safe is located.
While the third, with a shotgun in his right hand, goes up the row of checkouts, demanding that the cashiers open their drawers. “Money. Money, in the bags. Quick, faster.”
“Here, in my opinion, is the possible explanation for the killings in Brabant”: the confidences of the former head of investigation
Striking sentence
A gunshot rings out. Dr. Devriendt believes in intimidation shooting into ceilings. He is wrong.
Three meters from him, the man who shot turned his back on him and did not see him, too busy monitoring the customers in the store. General panic. “Everyone on the ground. Everyone lying down. The first one to move, I’ll cut him in two.”
“I’ll cut it in two!” Jacques Devriendt is formal. These are the words that were spoken. The expression is very particular. Can it bring back a memory to a reader?
Jacques Devriendt is about to obey when he hears groans from the cash registers. “At this point, the perpetrator still hasn’t seen me. I tell myself that if I lie down like he wants, he will hear me and will then turn around, see me and definitely shoot me at point blank range.
The ex-lawyer of the robber Patrick Haemers reveals: “Bruno Vandeuren, the gypsy, knew everything about the Brabant Killers”
Crazy idea
Faced with this dilemma, Jacques Devriendt prefers to raise his arms in the air. A crazy idea, which he is going to give up, crosses his mind:
“I had some oil changes. I thought I’d take one and smash it over his head.”
But the individual, who is still holding the hostage, turns around and notices his presence. “He had moved away a little, was six meters from me. There is a short moment when he sees me where nothing happens. I shout at him: ‘Don’t shoot’. But he takes aim at me and fire.”
It all came down to a stroke of luck. For the same price, buckshot, a 12 caliber Légia, would kill him on the spot. This ammunition releases a shower of 9 or 12 lead balls. None touched him. Jacques Devriendt thinks that the shooter, probably embarrassed by the hostage, aimed a little too far to the left. His jacket had a hole in it, some drains were shattered, a single bullet was enough to kill Ghislain Platane a moment earlier, but he had nothing.
The doctor draws the conclusion that perhaps these people were not the good shooters they said. “They missed me from six yards, so let me have my doubts.”
Flight of the authors and crush in Delhaize. A scene will mark him. Customers leave the supermarket in a panic, but not without forgetting to take the shopping carts and go through the checkouts. Human nature is what it is. Few were those who thought of helping and rescuing.
Emergency services, firefighters, police and gendarmes are arriving in all directions. Dr Devriendt keeps the memory of a poorly conducted investigation: he, who was one of the closest witnesses, was only questioned five days later.
This archive photo dated August 27, 1985 shows police officers and an ambulance in front of the Delhaize supermarket in Braine l’Alleud, after a robbery at the supermarket by the Brabant killers. Three people were killed during the robbery. ©BELGA
Description
His testimony has the advantage of being that of a doctor. For Jacques Devriendt, the man with the riot gun was “strong”, “tall”, “without being giant”. He was “presumably wearing a bulletproof jacket” under a “black” coat. The rifle, “stock included,” was “entirely black.” The barrel had been “sawed off”.
Although he has looked at them, unfortunately he cannot specify the color of the eyes. The voice was “ordinary”, not hoarse or scratchy. The author spoke French “without regional accent, Brussels, Liège, Flemish or other”.
We saw “1985”, the event series on the Brabant Killers
Money, money
Like most victims, the doctor deplores the lack of communication from the justice system. He also claims to have been shocked by the comments of a senior magistrate to justify the sidelining of Danièle Zucker, the profiler who worked in the case. “Ms. Zucker was developing a hypothesis that did not seem to please her. I find it difficult to understand that instead of humbly exploiting all the possibilities, it was rejected in this unpleasant way to ultimately only retain avenues of more and more twisted. We cut ourselves off from a whole series of possibilities. Who knows if one of them wasn’t the right one.”
On a personal level, one lead seems interesting to him, that of the former commissioner Jean-Pierre Adam on the brothers Xavier and Thierry S., these French gangsters from Charleville-Mézières.
Finally, he doubts the argument according to which the perpetrators were not crooks “since they took paltry loot”.
He who saw them throw themselves at the cash drawers after emptying the Delhaize safe recalls that the killers stole, in total, more than 7 million Belgian francs (around 535,000 euros in today’s value, editor’s note). ). For him, “these were not paltry loot”.
We know that investigators gave a nickname to each of the three main perpetrators: Killer, Giant and Old Man.
The one who shot Jacques Devriendt must have been the Killer, the one to whom the investigation attributes 21 of the 28 victims. Some going up to 23. In other words, Jacques Devriendt is a miracle.
After two months
Jacques Devriendt would have a great career at Brugmann, in internal medicine and intensive care.
He decided, on June 9, 2022, to become a civil party in the Killings case, for attempted murder. In doing so, he asked the judge to fulfill additional duties. Two months later, on August 9, he learned that the request was… rejected. Since then, Jacques Devriendt has had no further news of the investigation.
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