MrBallen

I mean, this had to be...

A hit.

And so Frison, after getting off the radio, went back to the minivan and just looked inside.

And right away, he saw there was a purse that was sitting untouched on the dashboard, which made him even more certain that this was no robbery.

I mean, very likely that would have been grabbed.

But then he noticed something else.

The front seats and the floor of the minivan were covered in all these rounded metallic pellets, which he recognized as being from shotgun ammunition, like buckshot, like the inside of, you know, what a shotgun fires or can fire.

And this struck Frison as being very strange.

I mean, a shotgun was an odd choice for a, you know, a professional hit.

because it was big and bulky and you really couldn't carry it in public without attracting a lot of attention.

And so this, combined with the fact that this happened in broad daylight, told Frison that very likely whoever had shot Helene and her driver was not an experienced hitman, which was also just not what he would have expected.

Just then, Frison heard the sound of sirens cut through the air and he knew his backup had arrived.

A few hours later, Frison was back at the police station talking to his team, which now included one of the city's very best detectives, investigator Catherine Messinio.

Both of their victims, Mohamed and Helene, had survived, at least to this point.

They were in comas, and their attack was already the leading news all around Europe.

But Frison was not particularly worried about potentially not being able to solve this because he knew he would have some answers soon.

Not only had their technicians processed the crime scene and gathered swabs and other evidence from the minivan, but also Frison's officers had found two security cameras near the scene that likely recorded the entire shooting.

So in France, it was common for cities and towns to have like a network of closed circuit surveillance cameras that law enforcement was able to access.

And Nice had more of those cameras than any other city in the country.

So Frison was optimistic about what the footage might show once it finally arrived.