The prosecution of Dax, in the Landes, requested the release on Monday in the trial of the company Herta, prosecuted before the criminal court for manslaughter after the death in 2014 of Lilian, a boy of almost three years suffocated with a piece of sausage.
The checks carried out during the investigation “did not make it possible to highlight sufficient elements” to condemn Herta, explained the deputy prosecutor Aude Le Hérissier. The public prosecutor, who demanded release as at the previous hearing in January 2021, considered that a “doubt remained about the brand of sausage ingested by Lilian”, for lack of proof of purchase.
The Herta group, whose CEO Marc Auclair was absent in court, was being prosecuted for “manslaughter by manifestly deliberate violation of an obligation of safety or prudence” after the death by suffocation of young Lilian, during a summer vacation with his parents, Florence and Vincent Lerbey.
The child victim of a wrong way
Lilian, aged 2 years and 11 months, died on August 11, 2014 in a campsite in Messanges, on the Landes coast, where this family from Bordeaux was staying. That day, on the menu: green beans and industrial sausages that the mother had cut into thin slices, Knacki according to her.
But after a few bites, Lilian had choked, victim of a “wrong way” and could not be resuscitated by the emergency services despite the immediate intervention of a nurse anesthetist friend and several maneuvers: Heimlich method, tapes in the back, suspension of the child by the feet… A piece of 3 mm in diameter was then removed from the throat of the deceased child using special pliers brought by the emergency services.
Package messages
Lilian’s parents had filed a complaint in 2017 against Herta, asking for the symbolic euro to prevent the tragedy from happening again. At the time, a message affixed to the back of Knacki packets by Herta recommended “to” cut “the sausages” into very small pieces “for” the youngest.
Since 2015, at the request of the Lerbey family, a new statement has appeared on the packaging: “for children under 4 years old, cut the sausage lengthwise and then into very small pieces to prevent risks of suffocation”.
” The message [d’avant 2015] was not sufficiently clear, explicit on the dangers of suffocation of a child under 4 years old, ”underlined the family lawyer Me Philippe Courtois. According to him, “all Herta advertisements since the 1980s feature children” and “none” show sausages “in small pieces”.
At the hearing, Herta’s defense argued that Lilian could very well have ingested a sausage from another brand. “We are talking about Knacki for all types of sausages”, noted Me Julien Vernet, the lawyer for the Herta group. But for the family, “it was a Herta sausage, there is no ambiguity”.
“Now criminally that Herta cannot be considered responsible for the death of our son because we do not have the receipt, we will accept it”, reacted at the end of the hearing the father, Vincent Lerbey . The deliberation will be delivered on July 11.