Octave Garnier - Death in Nogent-sur-Marne

Death in Nogent-sur-Marne

On May 14, 1912 Garnier and René Valet were killed in a shootout with French authorities when their safe house in Nogent-sur-Marne was raided by police. Armed with seven 9 mm Browning semi-automatics and two long-barreled Mausers, the two outlaws, who had barricaded themselves inside the rental house, faced 50 detectives, 250 police from Paris, Republican Guards, and 400 Zouaves from Nogent. As the six hour stand-off stretched on, Valet and Garnier burned 10,000 stolen francs but managed to hold back the army outside.

At midnight, having failed to remove the bandits, French authorities succeeded in positioning one and a half kilograms of melanite in the house. The resulting explosion rendered the structure's inhabitants unconscious and Garnier was then executed by a 9 mm shot to the right temple. Both men were buried in unmarked graves.

A memoir, found by police on Garnier's body explained his criminal activities and summed up: "It's for all these reasons that I rebelled, it's because I didn't want to live this life of present-day society, because I didn't want to wait and maybe die before I'd lived, that I defended myself against the oppressors with all the means at my disposal..."