Love rival charged with attempted murder for shooting French priest
Jealous husband is charged with attempted murder for shooting ‘sexually adventurous’ French priest who was sleeping with his young Russian wife
- Nikolaos Kakavelakis, 52, was shot twice outside his Lyon church last month
- Investigators first feared it was the latest in a spate of French terror attacks
- But now a Georgian national, 40, has been charged with attempted murder
- He admitted shooting the married priest for sleeping with his Russian wife, 30
- Investigators described Father Kakavelakis as ‘very into sex’ and ‘adventurous’
A jealous husband has been charged with attempted murder for shooting a ‘sexually adventurous’ Greek Orthodox priest last month in Lyon.
The Georgian national, 40, identified as Georgi P, was arrested on Friday and charged on Sunday after attacking married priest Nikolaos Kakavelakis, 52, for sleeping his Russian wife, prosecutors said.
The wife was released without charges at the weekend after the attack outside the church which saw the priest shot twice in the chest with a sawn-off shotgun, according to the Lyon prosecutor, Nicolas Jacquet. He survived and has now emerged from his coma.
Nikolaos Kakavelakis, who was shot twice outside his Greek Orthodox Church in Lyon, was the victim of an angry husband whose wife he was sleeping with
The 52-year-old father of two, was initially feared to be the latest victim of Islamic terrorism in France
The shooting had initially raised fears of a new act of terror in France against a Christian target after coming on the heels of a spate of deadly attacks in the last weeks blamed on radical Islamists.
But the investigation has shown that the motives of the attacker in Lyon were quite different after the priest woke from his coma and mumbled the name of the gunman.
Father Kakavelakis, who is married with two children and has been a priest at the Church of Annunciation for 12 years, is ‘very into sex, and he is very adventurous with the ladies,’ an investigator told Le Parisien.
Father Kakavelakis has now emerged from a coma and told detectives that the man who attempted to murder him was a love rival
The man admitted the shooting and told police that he had wanted revenge after discovering the priest was sleeping with his wife.
However he claimed that he had only wanted to injure his rival, not kill him, the prosecutor said.
Parts of the weapon have been recovered with the help of the suspect who told police he threw the gun into the River Saône.
The attacker has solely been identified as a 40-year-old man of Georgian nationality who lives close to the Greek Orthodox Church (pictured)
The victim himself led police to the jealousy motive when he identified his attacker after emerging from a coma.
The attack on the priest, which came two days after a deadly stabbing rampage in a church in the southern city of Nice, was at first feared to have possibly been another terror attack.
But investigators quickly determined that they were not dealing with any ideological motive, but a straightforward criminal case.
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