In the middle of the night between the 27th and 28th of November, two heavily armed men attempted to rob a Picard frozen-foods store of various frozen delicacies like lobster and smoked salmon and were then chased by two policemen. The suspects used their AK47s on the police, eventually killing the policeman in the passenger seat with shots to the head and shoulder. Erik Lales, 37, a member of the Anti-Criminal Unit of Aix-en-Provence's Gendarmerie, was announced dead on the 8th of December by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who spent his last minutes at his bed side at the hospital in the north of Marseille.

The pursuit was shocking not just for the relatively banal robbery of a food merchandiser but for the combination of the crime with war weapons like the Kalachnikov. It is a fairly recent phenomenon therefore, to witness automatic rifles being used against officers and the situation is now a serious concern to police. However, it deserves to be highlighted that deadly chases are still a relatively low occurrence in France compared to other developed countries and this was made even more evident by the presence of the nation's president, with Mr Lale's family at the time of his passing.

Our hearts and sincere condolences go to Erik's surviving wife and two young daughters in Montfort, Var.