The memories of certain witnesses are sometimes as foggy as the air on the banks of the Loire that evening. Because time has passed. But also because in the ranks of Steve Maia Caniço’s friends, we have been trying for almost five years to forget this terrible night of June 21 to 22, 2019. A night when the young man lost his life during a party music spent dancing on the Quais Wilson, in Nantes. Several sound systems had the agreement to play sound until 4 a.m. Steve was there, as always. Tired, the 24-year-old young man lay down not far from the banks of the Loire to rest. He had not drunk much and had not taken drugs. “Steve was a reasonable person,” assure his friends.
Described as sensitive and afraid of water, the young after-school facilitator fell into the Loire at exactly 4:33 a.m., as revealed by the long assessments carried out on his phone. Steve sank a few seconds or even minutes later and lost his life. At this time of the evening, Wilson Quay was drowned in a thick cloud of tear gas. Since Monday morning and the opening of the trial of Commissioner Grégoire Chassaing, the question of the role of these gases in the death of Steve Maia Caniço has been at the heart of the debates. Did the officer’s orders contribute to Steve’s fall in the Loire? Listening to the witnesses called for this first day of hearing, we might think yes.
To try to understand what happened that night, the criminal court of Rennes, where the trial took place, summoned many people present that evening. In turn, friends of the victim, partygoers present and members of the emergency services were heard. They all say the same thing. Around 4:30 a.m., they were sometimes suffocated, asphyxiated or blinded by the firing of tear gas without having heard any warning. And no one saw it coming.
He saves a man by holding his arm
The investigation showed that five people had fallen into the water at the precise moment of the police intervention, including Steve. Jérémy was one of them. On the stand, he recounted how he had fallen into the river after tear gas was fired by the police, led that evening by Grégoire Chassaing. “When I saw the gas, I started to walk along the Loire to get away. But the wind carried the tear gas and it surrounded me. I lost my sense of direction and put my foot in the void.” The young man who had just quit a job clarified that he was “not drunk” at the time of the police intervention. Once in the water, he managed to swim to a rope to hold on to and avoid drifting. He had heard cries for help and grabbed the arm of another individual who had fallen into the water. This man’s name is Alexandre. Now 28 years old, he says, speaking very quickly, that he too lost all sense of direction because of the gas.
“ I looked to the left, to the right, I saw nothing. I couldn’t even see my hand. I was crying, my throat was burning, I was coughing, I couldn’t breathe. I was panicking. I tripped over some girls who were sitting on the floor and fell. I got up, took a few steps, put one foot in the air and fell. »
He had dislocated his shoulder from the height of the fall and could not swim with one arm. Jérémy had caught him to save his life. “Luckily he was there. Otherwise, I could have drifted. After that, I thought about it a lot,” he testified on the stand.
The third man called to the stand is Alexis. He was quietly sitting with a friend when he too was caught in the cloud. ” I am asthmatic. I couldn’t breathe, I immediately panicked. I got up and ran straight to try to breathe. I fell into a void,” he says. The rest of his testimony delivered at 1,000 miles an hour took place in deafening silence. “I tried to catch someone who was drifting by the arm. I held it for two or three seconds and then I had to let go. I saw his figure walking away and he was struggling. And then he disappeared.” Was it Steve? Impossible to say.
The three men who fell into the water will wait around ten minutes before being rescued by the nautical brigade. “I heard people saying that someone was sinking,” says Jérémy. Without being able to say if it was Steve, who didn’t know how to swim.
“I lost my whole team”
The emergency services mobilized that evening said the same thing as the survivors. “We all felt uncomfortable and then we started coughing. We had no suggestive sign,” testified Florian, who led the Civil Security personnel mobilized that night. “Were you disrupted in your rescue missions because of the tear gas? », asks the lawyer for the civil parties, Me Cécile de Oliveira? “Yes, because I lost my entire team on the way back to the ambulance. We could hear people shouting that people had fallen into the Loire.” But he insists: it was not his place to go and rescue the people who had fallen into the water. “We are not equipped for that.”
Patrick was on board the Nautical Safety boat commissioned by the city of Nantes to secure the river. Sailing on a Loire at a really low level due to the tide, the rescuer had just brought a man back to the pontoon of the Navibus when he was called to go and help several people who had fallen into the water. “We waited for the firefighters to take care of the first victim and we left.” The rescuer also saw the thick cloud of smoke. He even saw a backpack floating on the water. Probably the one Steve was wearing that night.
An “apocalyptic” vision according to a rescuer
His team then came to the aid of a first man who was adrift, before taking charge of Jérémy, Alexis and Alexandre, all three clinging to ropes and tires. “There was general confusion, there were a lot of people. We didn’t understand what was happening. There were screams, our eyes were stinging,” said the rescuer at the stand. He then dropped the four survivors off at the pontoon and waited for the firefighters to take care of them. He then left to wander the Loire for several hours, without knowing that a man was still missing. “I found out on Monday. I immediately testified to what I knew.”
More information on the Steve case
Léonore was on board the same boat that night. Directing the projector, she describes an “apocalyptic” vision and even “a feeling of war”. “There was opaque smoke in front of us and we could hear explosions and screams. It was getting blacker. We couldn’t stay too close to the platforms because of the gas. It became unbreathable, I could no longer speak,” testifies the young woman, visibly still marked by that sad June night.
The criminal trial of Commissioner Chassaing continues all week in Rennes. An unusually long time for acts of manslaughter. “This will allow us to take the time to get to the bottom of things to determine whether there is a clear fault on the part of the defense,” warned the public prosecutor.