” I have no words “, repeated several times the young woman speaking at the bar. She wears a black sweater, she has long hair and her name is Bérénice. ” No words “, she believes, to describe to the court all the amazement, dread and infinite misfortune that struck this building in downtown Angers on Saturday, October 15, 2016.
Yet she says it all, Bérénice, in a precise, fluid, impressive voice at times. Despite the tears. “I was 20 years old and the day after that evening I went to see four of my friends at a funeral home. This is the last image I have of them”, she explains, quoting the first name of each one. Baptiste, Antoine, Benjamin and Lou, aged 25 to 18. “They all left an abyssal void in my life,” Berenice said.
“An apocalyptic scene”
It is a very technical trial which opened on February 9 before the criminal court of Angers. A trial lasting about a month to understand why, on October 16, the balcony located at 3e floor of a downtown apartment collapsed with 18 people on it. During the debates, we will talk about the various defects observed by the experts. And in the box, the five defendants, responsible in various capacities for the construction, will have to answer the questions of the civil parties.
But this Monday, February 14, it is the emotion which breaks in the courtroom with the testimony of those who lived this evening when “the inconceivable» occured. “An apocalyptic scene”, murmurs Matilda. “It was lunar, we had the impression of being on a scene of attacks”, adds Yuri.
That evening, everything had started in a banal way. A party between students, around thirty in all, who had come for the housewarming party of Bérénice and Mathilde, two sisters who were very happy to settle in this apartment rented before them, Benjamin and Baptiste, two pillars of this group of friends who , for many, had known each other since childhood. In primary school, at Saint-Martin college or at the tennis club of Bouchemaine, a town located about ten kilometers from Angers.
→ THE FACTS. In Angers, the trial of the collapsed balcony drama
Over time, the parents of the little band, too, had come to know each other. This October 16, before the evening, several of them had also gone to the apartment to have an aperitif. before leaving “young people partying”. In complete confidence. “When I went out, my mother used to tell me: be careful if you come in the car. But we don’t imagine that we can lose our lives being in an apartment, “ notes Hugo.
And this is what is striking over the testimonies. The irruption of misfortune in a moment of sweet tranquility when nothing seemed to be able to happen. At the helm, everyone described the same astonishment when a little after 11 p.m., the balcony collapsed, dragging down the two balconies on the lower floors. “It fell suddenly, without any signs that could have alerted us”, says Adele. “At the time of the fall, I just wondered when I was going to be in pain”, adds Yuri.
“Please stay with me”
Once on the ground, Baptiste found himself stuck under a slab, impossible to move at the moment. “We heard him say: hurry up, help me, I won’t last”, says Berenice. And it was Youri, then, who came to hold his friend’s hand while waiting for the firefighters to arrive. “I said to him: Yuri, please stay with me, talk to me. Otherwise I’ll fall asleep and I’ll leave. That day, Yuri saved my life,” says Baptiste who, despite a broken kidney and spine, is there, five and a half years later. On both legs, standing in court. Without sequelae. Well at least physically.
Because we feel that, psychologically, the wounds remain raw. All speak of their guilt at having survived. Or of their feeling of helplessness that evening, on this scene of quasi-war, in the middle of the dust and the rubble, to be able to help the others, more seriously buried. And the room capsizes with emotion when Théophile recounts the moment when he looked for Lou, his 18-year-old sister. “I called out his name but got no response. Then at one point, my head started to spin, I fell a little in a daze. I sat down and was unable to get up. Unable to go see my sister, to stay close to her, to reassure her. Incapable of being his big brother in fact”, tells the young man who will learn of Lou’s death in the early morning on his hospital bed.
There are also those who, that evening, saw the bodies of their friends under the concrete slab and immediately understood that they would not get up. But without being able to say anything to the parents, panicked, who were calling all over the place to have news of their child. Thus, Hugo was unable to say that his cousin Baptiste was dead. “Because at that time, I couldn’t believe it. » A kind of denial like a self-protective bubble. Of short time. “At the hospital, every time we came into my room, I was afraid that they would tell me what I actually already knew,” Hugo remembers.
Words of horror, of desolation. But perhaps the most poignant is the moment when Lou’s parents, hugging each other at the helm so as not to sink, recount the last photo of their daughter, taken on the day of the tragedy, in the family kitchen, at lunch time. “She was with her brother. She was fooling around with him. That was it, Lou. She was always laughing.” whispers his father. “And in the afternoon, she spent her time getting ready for this evening. To dress up, to look pretty »said his mother.
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