The case was only revealed this Friday with the opening of a judicial investigation for “violence resulting in death without intention to give it” and “non-assistance to person in danger” after the death of a soldier , hit by security guards leaving a nightclub on August 27 in Solliès-Pont (Var). The young man, who was not treated until the next day, died from his injuries five days later.
Neither the security guards, also targeted for “obstructing rescue” and “unlawful modification of the scene of a crime or offence”, nor his comrades who had brought him back to his accommodation, had warned the firefighters. Placed in police custody, eight people will be brought this Friday before the investigating judge of Toulon, announce the prefect of Var and the prosecutor of Toulon in a press release.
Head trauma with diffuse cerebral hemorrhage
That night, it was around 5 a.m. that the tone became very heated between the victim and employees of the night establishment Le HQ. Two bouncers violently hit the man, who lost consciousness. “Lying unconscious on the road”, his body was then “pulled by a group of four people including three security guards and a client of the establishment to be hidden between parked vehicles”, specify the prosecutor and the prefect. They do not notify emergency services. Worse, when a witness contacted them and they arrived on the scene, they were “directed in the wrong direction by one of the security guards” and left without being able to take care of the victim.
The five other soldiers with whom the injured man had spent the evening finally picked up their comrade and transported him to the unit in which they were all housed. They don’t notify emergency services either. The latter are only called back the next day at the sole request of their management, “alert by the cries and in front of the seriousness of the injuries” of the victim.
Transported to the Sainte-Anne Army Training Hospital in Toulon, the young man died there on September 1. The autopsy will reveal that his death is “secondary to head trauma with diffuse cerebral hemorrhage”, further indicate the prefect and the prosecutor in their press release.
The security guards did not have approval
Hearings of witnesses and the exploitation of the establishment’s video surveillance have led to the arrest of eight people in recent days. Three security guards, one of the customers of the nightclub, but also four of the five people who had accompanied the victim were placed in police custody on Wednesday and Thursday. The investigating judge will be able to decide on their indictment this Friday. The prosecution requested the provisional detention of the two perpetrators of the beatings and the placement under judicial supervision of all those who did not provide assistance to the victim.
Two other procedures are being launched at the same time. One by the prosecution “due to the lack of approval of the national center for private security activities of the security guards of the establishment”. And the second by the prefecture, which could lead to the administrative closure of the nightclub for a period of six months.