The 47-year-old man in police custody after the fire in a building that claimed the lives of three people on Sunday in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes) admitted “being at the origin of the fire”, but in a way “involuntary”, having thrown “an unextinguished cigarette”, according to the prosecution on Tuesday.
This man with no criminal record, who had initially denied any involvement in the occurrence of the fire, mentioned “during his last hearing” the “throwing of an unextinguished cigarette in the entrance hall of the building “, said the public prosecutor of Grasse Damien Savarzeix in a press release.
The prosecution will request his placement in pre-trial detention
The suspect will be brought before an investigating judge with a view to the opening of a judicial investigation for “willful damage by fire having caused death, willful damage by fire having caused permanent disability, willful damage by fire having caused total interruption of work for more than eight days, and willful damage by fire”, underlined the prosecution, which will require his placement in pre-trial detention.
“The psychiatric examination carried out during police custody concludes, at this stage, that the accused person is fully criminally responsible”, according to the same source.
Three people died
As of Monday, the Grasse prosecutor’s office had explained that it favored “the thesis of human intervention” for this fire, the first findings of the expert on the scene having made it possible to “discard a loss of accidental origin”. The man in police custody had been arrested at the beginning of the evening on Sunday, after “the exploitation of the city’s video protection” which had made it possible to identify “an individual leaving the building two minutes before the cameras detected a start fire “, at 2:49 a.m. Sunday morning, Damien Savarzeix explained Monday in a previous press release.
Three people, two women and a man, died in this fire that started in the stairwell of a five-storey building located in the historic center of Grasse.
Victims being identified
The deceased victims “are still being identified, in particular by means of DNA expertise”, added the prosecution on Tuesday. Two of them perished in the flames and another, who had probably defenestrated to try to escape the fire, had been found unresponsive by firefighters in front of the building. Three people were also seriously injured in the fire, one of whom was still in “vital emergency” on Monday, according to the prosecution. The situation of this victim was not specified on Tuesday.
The center of Grasse, a city known for its perfumeries, has a high rate of poverty, but renovation operations have been carried out there for years. The building where the fire broke out had, like other buildings in the historic center, been given formal notice to speed up the renovation work by the municipality.