A MIDDLE-AGED lawyer who shot and wounded the parish priest and the sacristan of a Geneva church, then took refuge inside the building, surrendered peacefully early yesterday after a six-hour siege, police said.
The 52-year-old man, from Basle, had told reporters by telephone that his marriage and his professional partnership had broken down.
The incident began after evening Mass on Saturday when the man asked to use the telephone and was taken to the sacristy. When, after 45 minutes, the priest and sacristan asked him to come off the phone, the man produced a pistol and fired three times. The priest was wounded twice in the legs and the sacristan once.
Police called in a psychologist to help find a peaceful end to the stand-off.