On July 19, 2017, Barbara Weldens was performing on stage at the Léo Ferré festival in Gourdon, in the Lot, when she collapsed. Aged 35 and six months pregnant, the singer was the victim of a fatal electrocution. This Thursday, the Cahors Criminal Court sentenced the intermittent worker who was in charge of the lighting that evening to an eighteen-month suspended prison sentence. The latter, who had not received any training in electricity but had been practicing for thirty years, was also banned from working as a performance worker for five years.
The Friends of the Butte, the organizing association, was sentenced to a suspended fine of 20,000 euros. On the other hand, the judges released the intermittent in charge of the sound, also present on the dock last December during the trial for “manslaughter”.
The investigation into the young woman’s death had revealed “electrical malfunctions”, as well as “obsolete” equipment. She had demonstrated that a cable connected to the microphone had a “badly made” weld and a “stale” projector were the cause of the accident.
“A condemnation for exemplary”
“This death was a huge revealer for all the technicians of the show in the whole of France. […] It has to be a huge warning, ”reacted Me Denis Boucharinc, the lawyer for the singer’s relatives, who said that ” a conviction was needed without overwhelming anyone, for the exemplary “.
For the lighting designer, this decision “closes the story, that was the most important thing”, he declared at the end of the court, indicating that he had already stopped working in this sector of activity.