She was 9 years old and had come to France to spend a summer vacation with her family. However, his life abruptly ended in July 2022, in the swimming pool of a campsite in Les Sables-d’Olonne, in Vendée. Originally from the Netherlands, little Fenna was playing in the establishment’s swimming pool when her hair were trapped by a suction mouth located on the side of the pool. She will never be able to return to the surface and will die drowned. A little less than two years after the opening of an investigation, the Sables-d’Olonne public prosecutor’s office has just announced the indictment of the Chadotel group for manslaughter. The company, which operates 13 campsites in France, is the owner of La Dune des sables, the Vendée establishment where the tragedy took place.
The first elements of the investigation showed that the suction mouth was not suitable. The expert report confirms that it was “non-compliant”. “The expert suction device presents a certain risk of entrapment of the user either by suction cup effect or by suction of hair”, we learn in this report. In this document, we can also read that the emergency stop device of this suction outlet was positioned too far from the pool and the swimming lifeguard. The hammer allowing you to break the glass of its box and access the device was also “missing”.
The lawyer denounces negligence and incompetence
For Fenna’s parents and loved ones, this indictment is an “important first step in their quest for truth” but “will never extinguish their pain”, said their lawyer Me Solenn Le Tutour. “Losing a child is the hardest thing in an adult’s life. But what is even more difficult for them is knowing that the accident of their dear child is the dramatic outcome of a series of unbearable negligence and incompetence,” added the lawyer. The Chadotel group and its lawyer did not react Friday morning.