“Do you think you have a responsibility in his death? “The question of the president of the correctional court is direct. The defendant, prosecuted this Tuesday, April 12 for manslaughter in the context of his work, does not shirk. ” I do not believe. There was nothing abnormal about this site”.
However, it was he who, by rolling back his twenty-six-ton machine, caused the death of his team leader on May 18, 2016, in Saint-Angel. That day, the services of the Allier departmental council intervened on departmental road 456.
It is around 10:30 a.m., five hundred meters of tarring have already been done. The sprayer driver gets back behind the wheel. He shifts into reverse and begins to back up to get back in line with the road.
” A jolt ”
At the start of the manoeuvre, he sees his team leader in the rear view mirror. Then, nothing more until “a jolt” which led him to immediately stop the machine. One of the agents present on the site launches a few chilling words. “The leader is crushed”!
Six years after the events, the defendant, now retired, still bears the brunt of this dramatic accident. “I was arrested for a year, I took a lot of antidepressants and sleeping pills.” confides the sexagenarian. The victim’s mother and daughter are “broken”, according to their lawyer Me Denis Cottier. “They didn’t come to the hearing because they didn’t have the strength. But today they have no animosity.
An employee of the Allier departmental council killed on a construction site
In his submissions, the deputy prosecutor, who is asking for a suspended fine of 5,000 euros, clearly calls into question the responsibility of the defendant. “How not to believe that there is a fault committed? How not to believe that there is negligence? »
Me Bernard Southon may look, he does not see where the driver has committed an imprudence. The sexagenarian’s lawyer, who pleads for release, prefers to make an unverifiable hypothesis. What if the team leader had put himself in danger by using his mobile phone?
A regular truck
Also implicated in this case, should the Allier departmental council, prosecuted for manslaughter by a legal person, be released? This is the opinion of the prosecution. Because the truck, put into circulation in 2004, was in conformity with the rules of the time.
Clearly, there was no obligation to install back-up alarms, something that the county council did in the months following the accident. “Can we blame him for a fault when he is in good standing with the law? »
The lawyer of the Department, Remi-Pierre Drai, is on the same line. “The county council was up to it and no fault can be attributed to it in connection with the accident”.
Judgment was reserved on May 10.
Fabrice Redon
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