The mother of a little girl who drowned in August during a village festival in the Hautes-Pyrénées will be tried for involuntary manslaughter, as will the mayor and the president of the festival committee, we learned on Wednesday with the Tarbes public prosecutor’s office.
Placed in police custody on Monday, they are summoned before the Tarbes criminal court on December 5, indicated the public prosecutor of Tarbes Bérengère Prud’homme, confirming initial information from France Bleu Béarn Bigorre.
The mother under alcohol and cannabis at the party
“This death is the result of the wrongful behavior of several people,” she stressed. The mother had fallen in the middle of the night with her two-year-old daughter in a stroller in the Bouès, a river which runs through the village of Villembits, and was unable to get her out of the water. She had consumed alcohol as well as cannabis, “which at least partly explains the loss of balance and the fall into the river”, according to the prosecutor.
The mayor of the village, Henry Lacoste, and the president of the festival committee are being prosecuted precisely for “manslaughter by clearly deliberate violation of an obligation of prudence or safety” because alcohol had been served during the party, then that it was forbidden, and that it took place near the river instead of the village hall, where it was initially planned by municipal decree. “I didn’t learn about it [le changement de lieu, NDLR] that at noon, I did not have time to react,” Mr. Lacoste told AFP.