This is a great disappointment for their loved ones. The state of preservation of the organs taken from five victims of the attack of July 14, 2016 in Nice no longer allows DNA tests and they are therefore no longer identifiable. “The families are stunned, they did not expect this,” said Virginie Le Roy, their lawyer.
After the ram truck attack which left 86 dead and more than 400 injured on the Promenade des Anglais, an autopsy was carried out on 14 of the victims and a total of 173 organs were then removed and placed under seal. But the families were not informed and most only found out at the trial in 2022.
“The organs were too damaged by formalin”
If some families had obtained the restitution of the organs of their loved ones for burial, others had requested DNA tests to be certain of recovering the correct organs. But, during a meeting on Tuesday at the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) in Paris, these five families learned that no DNA could be extracted “because the organs were too damaged by formalin”, regretted Me Virginie Le Roy. “You’ll have to explain, because formalin is supposed to preserve. Some organs were not even recognizable,” she added.
The families concerned now have six months to decide whether they want to recover the organs labeled as those of their loved ones, currently stored in a specialized laboratory in Nantes. “There is nothing left to do now […]we will have to live with this doubt”, also denounced the lawyer, explaining that, despite the assurances of the Pnat, the families were “in distrust”.
“To the dregs…”
This is the case for Amie’s parents, especially since her mother had spotted in the file a report referring to a young woman in her twenties, when Amie was only 12 years old. when she was hit by the truck. Last week, her father, Thierry Vimal, spoke of a “funeral procession that has lasted for seven years” and expressed his hope of finally being able to bury his daughter’s brain, heart, lungs and even the uterus next to the ashes. of the child, cremated in 2016. Tuesday evening, he simply commented on X (ex-Twitter): “To the dregs. »
According to former anti-terrorism prosecutor François Molins, these 14 autopsies aimed to remove any doubt about the circumstances of the deaths. But taking small samples of the organs would have been enough, he admitted.