[6] Three months prior to the shooting, Dornier, together with his father, bought a Volkswagen Golf GTI because he wanted the choice to leave the farm whenever he wished.

[5] In the months prior to the rampage, Dornier fired shots at his father and his neighbour René Barrand, and pelted a woman with stones.

[3] Dornier's parents considered putting him in a psychiatric hospital, but he became furious when his doctor talked to him about the matter and his mother eventually decided against it.

The shotgun was earlier found by Maillard when it was overthrown by his dog, though he thought that Dornier's father had put it there after the previous shooting incidents.

While Roger Clausse alerted police, Dornier drove towards Baume-les-Dames, killing Louis Girardot on the way and shooting gendarme René Sarrazin in the arm.

While being chased by 40 police officers,[10] he shot Georges Pernin and Marie-Alice Champroy at a crossroads – causing their cars to crash – and killed Pierre Boeuf.

[13] Police recovered two suitcases at Dornier's farm, packed, among other things, with books and clothes, suggesting that he had planned to flee afterwards.

All festivities planned for celebrating the Bastille Day on July 14 were cancelled in Baume-les-Dames and replaced with a solemn ceremony to commemorate the victims of the shooting.

[15] Two psychiatrists were appointed to examine his mental state, and in November the same year they declared that Dornier had schizophrenia, was therefore not responsible for his crimes, and should be confined in a special facility for dangerous patients.

[16] Their findings were confirmed in February 1990[17] and so he was declared insane and transferred from the prison in Dijon, where he was held in remand, to the mental hospital in Sarreguemines on April 18, 1991.