Europe 1 with AFP 07:19, October 21, 2021
The 37-year-old suspect is the grandson of the victim, who was found beheaded and eviscerated on Wednesday in the middle of the day in Bollène, in the Vaucluse.
About a hundred gendarmes had been mobilized since.
The man suspected of having beheaded his grandfather was arrested on Wednesday shortly before midnight in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, a town bordering Bollène in the Vaucluse, where the homicide had occurred, the gendarmes announced on Thursday.
He was arrested around 11:30 pm: "he knocked insistently on the door of a resident, finding his behavior strange, the latter contacted the gendarmerie who came to question him," writes the gendarmerie in a message to the press.
A hundred gendarmes had been mobilized since Wednesday afternoon to find him after a homicide of "unprecedented violence", the Carpentras prosecutor, Pierre Gagnoud, told AFP on Wednesday evening.
"The terrorist trail totally excluded"
"The terrorist trail is completely excluded, investigators favoring the family circle against a background of psychiatric disorders in the alleged perpetrator," added the prosecutor, indicating that the wanted suspect was the grandson of the victim, a 37-year-old man.
The investigation for "intentional homicide" was entrusted to the search squad of the Orange gendarmerie, assisted by criminal investigation technicians from Avignon and the Marseille research section.