Sunday morning, in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, near Lille, three police officers died after their vehicle was hit by a young man driving in the wrong direction, drunk and under the influence of narcotics. The latter is also dead, while his passenger was seriously injured as well as the young girl transported by the police. And if the investigations have advanced rapidly, many questions still remain unanswered. Will there ever be a trial? Was the defendant a soldier? Is the procedure concerning the young girl compromised?
Does the death of the suspect extinguish the legal action?
In France, if we can judge a person in his absence, on the other hand we do not judge the dead. And in this drama, the main suspect, driver of the car that hit the police vehicle, did not survive the accident. “Having to resolve that there will never be a trial is often difficult for the families of victims and for the victims, because this stage is a moment that belongs to them during which they will have answers”, recognizes Maître Antoine Regley, lawyer specializing in traffic law and victims’ rights contacted by 20 minutes.
However, the trial box is perhaps not entirely unthinkable. “Depending on the elements of the investigation, the prosecution may decide to open a judicial investigation with an indictment of the passenger of the vehicle at fault for his possible indirect responsibility in the accident”, continues the lawyer. “It’s fragile, but not impossible”, still assures Master Regley, taking the example of a nightclub server implicated after the road accident caused by a client. Sentenced at first instance, the judgment was nevertheless subsequently quashed for lack of being able to demonstrate a causal link. “Going to trial with the passenger as the only defendant means taking the risk of seeing the acquittal pronounced”, continues the lawyer.
An accident that erases the traces?
According to the Lille prosecutor’s office, the mission of the deceased police officers was to take their 16-year-old passenger to the medico-judicial unit of the Lille University Hospital “in order to have her examined urgently by a doctor as part of an investigation opened for acts of personal injury that she had denounced during the night”. Seriously injured during the accident, the teenager was actually admitted to the Lille hospital center, but to the emergency department. “The priority of the doctors was to save her life and they were perhaps not aware of the examinations she had to undergo,” said Antoine Regley.
In the event that the medico-judicial findings have not been made, the whole problem is to know if the traces and the proofs of the attack will have disappeared: “Recording these traces is the role of a doctor expert of the courts and it will be up to him to determine if it is still possible to collect this information”, explains to 20 minutes a Parisian medical examiner who wishes to remain discreet. “Each case is different and it also depends on whether it is a physical assault or a sexual assault,” he adds.
In this case, the question will not arise. “the medical examinations which were to be carried out on the young girl […] have actually been able to be achieved,” he told 20 minutes the prosecutor of Lille, Carole Etienne, adding that “the investigation into the facts which she denounced is continuing under normal conditions”.
Was the defendant a soldier?
The driver of the Alfa Romeo who hit the police vehicle is a certain CO, born in 1999 and therefore 24 years old. On Sunday, a police source said he was known for drinking, drug use and outrage. The Lille prosecutor also confirmed on Monday that the respondent was positive for alcohol and cannabis at the time of the tragedy.
A pedigree that did not prevent the young man from joining the Army in 2018, after working for a time in a bakery in Hem, near Roubaix. A military status that he always displayed on social networks. “CO is indeed a former soldier who was declared a deserter in 2020”, assures 20 minutes a source at the Army General Staff. This same source specifies that the “contract with the Army was terminated in 2021”, and that the young man “is no longer part of the Army workforce”.