The death toll from bad weather in the south-east of France rose to five deaths with the discovery of the body of an octogenarian this Monday March 11 in the Hérault River, near his flooded vehicle, we learned from the prefecture of Hérault and the public prosecutor’s office of Béziers.
The body of this man, aged 87, was found in Hérault, near the town of Pézenas, at the end of the morning, said the public prosecutor of Béziers, Raphaël Balland, to AFP . A young woman who could have been with the octogenarian at the time of the accident is also wanted, said the magistrate.
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The old man and the young woman were seen together in a business late Sunday afternoon by the establishment’s video surveillance cameras. As she could not be identified and therefore contacted, her image captured by the camera will be broadcast as part of a call for witnesses, in order to verify whether or not she was on board the octogenarian’s vehicle during the the accident, the time of which is not known, explained Raphaël Balland.
Three people still missing
Research is being carried out by firefighters divers as well as the gendarmerie, said the prefect of Hérault in a post on X (formerly Twitter). The section of the river where the victim’s body was found, stuck in branches, about twenty meters from his vehicle, was placed on yellow flood alert this weekend, he stressed.
With this new victim, five people lost their lives this weekend, swept away with their vehicles by floods, in Gard or Hérault, while three people are still officially missing, two children aged 4 and 13 years in Gard and a man in Ardèche.
The first four victims, all in Gard, are a man found Sunday morning in Gagnières, a village in the north of the department, after being swept away around 6:45 p.m. on Saturday; two women aged 47 and 50, also caught by water in their car, Sunday around 5 a.m., in Goudargues; And a man, the father of the two missing children, found Monday in Gardon, in Dions, a village of 500 inhabitants north of Nîmes, after their car fell from a submersible bridge on Saturday around 11:30 p.m.
Only the mother, aged 40, was able to be saved.
2024-03-11 17:04:11
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