The Annecy shootings (Murder in the Alps), were the deaths on 5 September 2012 of three members of a British family and a French citizen on the Route Forestière Domaniale de la Combe d'Ire near Chevaline, Haute-Savoie, France, near the southern end of Lake Annecy.
Four people were killed: an Iraqi-born British tourist named Saad al-Hilli, 50; his wife Iqbal, 47; her mother Suhaila al-Allaf, 74, who held a Swedish passport; and French cyclist Sylvain Mollier, 45. The al-Hillis' two daughters both survived the attack. One, aged 4, was hidden under the legs of her dead mother in the rear footwell for eight hours even while the Gendarmerie were on the scene; she was only discovered by specialist forensic investigators. The elder daughter, aged 7, was shot in the shoulder and also suffered a head wound; she returned to the United Kingdom on 14 September 2012.
The investigation was flawed, there is no doubt about that. The French prosecutor in the documentary came across as almost arrogant, but to be honest I think he was just plain inept. So many wrong decisions were made, and procedures not followed that it is hardly surprising that the investigation got nowhere.
It seems clear that attention was focused on the ethnicity of the family that were slain rather than a more pragmatic approach to the whole event.
The question that was not discussed was why was the gunman at the spot where he carried out the attack? If the al-Hillis were the target, he could not possibly have known that they would stop at that very point on their journey into the mountain.
If however the cyclist was the target than the gunman could have predicted he would pass that spot, maybe even have overtaken him on the journey into the mountians. This just would leave the al-Hillis in the wrong place at the the wrong time.
Investigations into the background of the cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, were addressed way too far down the line after so much time had been focused on the background and family of the al-Hilli's and by then they came up against a wall of silence from his family.
Another anomaly was that it was said that the gunman fired 25 rounds and that he would have reloaded once during the attack, but a Lugar magazine holds 8 bullets, so he would have had to reload at least three times.
A good documentary that was not overly long.
