A delegation from the family of the deceased came to attend the hearing. Dignified, discreet on her bench, still bruised by the death of her matriarch, in November 2021, in Algrange, at the age of 77. The accidental death of the mother, the grandmother, upset his family. The whole neighborhood itself. Especially when they learned that a badly extinguished cigarette by the downstairs neighbor was the cause of his disappearance.
This Tuesday, April 26, the neighbor in question, a retiree living rue des Eglantines since the 1960s, appeared before the Thionville court for “manslaughter”. A man described as “a hermit, a heavy smoker”, which the defendant agrees without flinching. That night, in this neighborhood where everyone knows each other, neighbors sound the alarm, worried by the presence of smoke and a burning smell in their bathroom.
–
“I don’t see it, I don’t have the words”
The neighbor is trying to contain the fire that broke out in his home for an hour with a bottle of water. He fell asleep after consuming alcohol, a fact he confirms, and stubbing out a cigarette in a cardboard container, which contained paper. A negligence with disastrous consequences, which plunged the children and grandchildren of the victim into immeasurable grief.
At the bar, facing President Rousseau, the defendant does not let anything show through. “I recognize what happened, it’s a nightmare, I think about it all the time, I don’t see it, I don’t have the words,” says the bachelor with a clean criminal record. In his indictment, the representative of the public prosecutor’s office noted in the sexagenarian “a usual imprudence, given the astronomical quantity of cigarette butts found in the ”false trash can”, so many risks of fire”. And Ludovic Louet to ask for the maximum sentence, ie 3 years in prison, accompanied by 2 years suspended probation, and the obligation to compensate the descendants and to follow psychological care. The court ruled: 3 years in prison with a simple suspended sentence, together with compensation for the four children up to €10,000 each, and €5,000 for the seven grandchildren.
–
