Between 2011 and 2018, he admitted to being the cause of 43 fires. A volunteer firefighter from the town of Agde, in the Hérault, has just been sentenced to five years in prison, two of which are suspended.
This 50-year-old man, an “unregistered agent” of the environmental police, was arrested in 2019 and has already been placed in pre-trial detention for nine months. The court also sentenced him to pay 93,000 euros to the department’s fire department for the means used to put out the fires.
The investigation, carried out over several months, made it possible to determine that the arsonist was often the first on the scene of the disasters. He was also often the one who alerted the emergency services. At the helm, the one whose father had been the boss of the Agde fire station for many years, explained that he suffered from deep depression and a severe problem of alcoholism.
This is not the first time that a volunteer firefighter has been convicted in the Hérault. The same court tried in September, a man for similar facts. He had been sentenced to two years in prison, including one year suspended probation for having caused two fires in this department.