From our special correspondent in Grenoble (Isère),
“It was a ticking time bomb. » Four and a half years after the death of his two parents, killed in a car accident on February 26, 2019 in Bourgoin-Jallieu (Isère), Olivier still does not understand how Loïc D., gendarme, was able to get behind the wheel. That day, taking advantage of a day of rest, the man, seated at the counter of a bistro in Villefontaine, “drank a whole afternoon” with four of his colleagues, who came to join him gradually. . “Eighteen pints or nine liters of beer, a cocktail, a Get 27 and a glass of wine for four,” lists lawyer Hervé Gerbi, denouncing the attitude of the “merry table”. “No one tried to detain him despite his blood alcohol level close to an alcoholic coma. » One of them even got into the car with him, putting their children in the back of the vehicle.
If the driver was immediately sentenced to eighteen months in prison and removed from the gendarmerie, the four children of the Duron family also filed a complaint against his colleagues. Two of them will be tried this Tuesday before the Grenoble criminal court. One, the passenger, for manslaughter. The other for failure to prevent a crime. “The court must show its desire to sanction those responsible for road violence much more severely: those who get behind the wheel and those who let them go,” urges Hervé Gerbi on the eve of the hearing.
At the time of the accident, the driver had an alcohol level of 2.54 g/liter of blood. Around 7 p.m., he rushed into traffic at the wheel of his car. “A 275 HP car traveling at 120-150 km/hour which hit my parents’ car. They were stopped because there were traffic jams,” recalls Olivier. And to show, supporting photo: “The impact was so violent that the rear seats ended up in front. It was no longer a car but a pile of scrap metal. » Crushed inside, Geneviève and Florencio, aged 69 and 71, will not survive. “We cannot admit that no one realized his alcoholic state,” says their son.
The gendarme, passenger, “asked the children to lie”
“Not only did they not stop him from leaving, but they lied and tried to evade justice,” accuses Hervé Gerbi. And to support: “They lied about the speed at which their colleague was driving. They lied about his alcohol level. They are police officers, they should have faced their responsibilities. Instead, the passenger left the scene, deserting the scene of the accident after calling his comrades rather than the emergency services. And he asked the children, who were with them, to lie about his presence in the vehicle. »
Even if they have “no illusions”, Olivier Duron and his brothers and sisters nevertheless hope that their “fight will not be in vain”. “Certain cases, like the accident caused by Pierre Palmade, have hysterized public opinion. We hope at least to be heard by the courts to move forward in our mourning because today, we are still far from seeing the end of the tunnel. » The two gendarmes each face five years in prison.