The identity of the body found Thursday afternoon by a fisherman in a river in Moncoutant-sur-Sèvre, in Deux-Sèvres, is not officially confirmed. But identity papers in the name of Erwan Blais, this 18-year-old student, missing since an evening at a discotheque, on the night of February 10 to 11, were found in the clothes worn by the body.
Julien Wattebled, public prosecutor in Niort, ordered that an autopsy be carried out in order to determine the causes of death, as well as a genetic expertise “to confirm the identity” of the corpse, which “cannot be formally identified with this stage.”
We lost track of him around 2 a.m.
Erwan, a BTS banking student in Poitiers, spent an evening with three friends at La Morinière, a nightclub located in Moncoutant-sur-Sèvre and near which there are several bodies of water. There were almost 900 people in the nightclub that night. “Erwan was drunk and he was thrown out during the night, after a minor incident in the establishment,” explained to 20 minutes a source close to the investigation.
Video surveillance shows that he went out around 1:45 a.m. and we also saw him a little later in the night, in the establishment’s parking lot. His phone was blocked until 2:50 a.m., according to the prosecution. His friends, who did not know that he had been thrown out, looked for him at 5 a.m., when the establishment closed. After unsuccessful searches, they notified his family around 6 a.m.
Significant research resources
After the disappearance of the student, the gendarmerie launched a call for witnesses, a search was organized and divers probed the Sèvre river and the ponds located around the nightclub. Dozens of gendarmes were mobilized, but even with the help of dogs, a drone and a helicopter, they were unable to find the student’s trace for many weeks.
Erwan’s family filed a complaint against the nightclub for “failure to assist a person in danger”.