Victims were robbed, says the survivor of a decimated family

His pre-rugby physique does not match his voice broken by emotion. The only survivor of a tragedy that killed six members of his family, Christophe Lyon gave poignant testimony on Tuesday at the trial of the July 14, 2016 attack in Nice. That evening, when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel deliberately drove into the crowd massed on the Promenade des Anglais, he lost his wife Véronique, his son-in-law Michaël, his parents Germain and Gisèle and his parents-in-law François and Christiane.

Now 50, this former Army chief warrant officer, blue polo shirt and close-cropped hair, has photos of loved ones broadcast in the courtroom. With delicacy, he paints a short portrait of each of them. The last photo shows them all having lunch on a sunny terrace in the Nice hinterland a few hours before the tragedy. The faces are smiling. “There are often conflicts between families, and with us, this was not the case”, explains Christophe Lyon. In the evening, everyone goes down to town to enjoy the fireworks.

“We were walking towards the Palais de la Méditerranée when I heard a noise. I turned around, I saw the truck and I just had time to shift myself and see them all » getting mowed down, he continues, before pausing and crying. The former soldier puts his parents, the only two who are still breathing, in a lateral position of safety. “I was going from body to body. I kept saying I loved them,” he says.

He tells of the scavengers who take pictures

Another silence and a deep breath and her voice grew stronger. “After the horror of the act, we realize the horror of the man,” he said in a dry voice. He tells of scavengers taking pictures rather than rescuing the injured. And “fuckers” who rob the victims. “There was one on my mother… The horror of humanity. The latter dies before help arrives. His father is “overwhelmed with urgency”. At the CHU, “I was like a zombie. I was wandering,” he said.

Then we had to go home. Tell loved ones the terrible news. After three days, he remembers that his in-laws’ dog stayed in the car parked in the parking lot. The windows were ajar and the car was in the basement. The dog, which has since become Christophe Lyon’s “mascot”, is alive. He allows himself a first smile.

What follows is stupefaction. Silence, withdrawal from the world. To get back on his feet, he chose to throw himself into work headlong. “Twelve hours a day including Saturday. »

Political recuperation and the shock of the autopsy

He also discovers political recovery and has no tender words for those who try it. He thus evokes Christian Estrosi (expected at the helm on October 20) who “runs after me to introduce myself to President Macron and forgets who I am two minutes later”, or even ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy “who wants to meet me but who cancels the meeting when I tell him that I don’t want journalists”.

He then recounts the shock when he receives his father’s autopsy report in November 2019. And a new shock when he learns, at the hearing at the start of the trial, that his father’s organs have been removed. “Nobody ever told us anything. When we went to gather, we thought that all the bodies were whole. This was not the case. We fell back into horror,” he said.

Survivor’s guilt gnaws at him. “If someone had to leave that day, it was surely me, because of my military past, my youthful mistakes,” he wants to convince himself. When he returns to the civil party bench, his twin sisters hug him. The photo of the last family meal fades from the screen.

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