An angry family. On Thursday August 3, Rayan’s body was found in the Deûle canal, in Lille, in the North, not far from the zoo and Vauban park. The young man of 20 years had not given any sign of life since Monday July 31, after an evening spent with work colleagues. “Absence of traumatic lesions” had revealed the autopsy.
About three weeks later, on Wednesday August 23, a second body was discovered in almost the same location. The latest news – but justice is not very talkative on the subject – this new victim, a man in his thirties, has still not been identified.
Lack of government action
But this new drama has had the effect of an additional electric shock for Alain Carduner, who is still mourning the death of his son Rayan. This 53-year-old father does not believe for a second in accidental death or suicide. And he decided to denounce “the lack of action by the public authorities to secure the Deûle canal”, he explains to 20 minutes. “It has been going on for more than twenty years, there have been drownings regularly, and on the 4 km of this channel, no effective protection, nor any CCTV camera has been installed, he accuses. Only a rope has been fixed in some places, but it does not allow you to get out if you fall. We let our children die without doing anything. »
Over the past three decades, the list of deaths by drowning in this canal which crosses Lille is indeed quite long. With more or less publicized dramas. The last two drownings echo in particular a series of five victims of the Deûle between October 2010 and November 2011. Only one of these “cases” is today the subject of a judicial investigation for a possible crime.
“I don’t want Rayan’s case to be forgotten”
“Each time, the first hypotheses of the police and justice evoke an accident or a suicide, before, sometimes, to discover that it could be a murder. It would be good if the heavy liabilities of this area condition the investigation, ”protests Alain Carduner. From Paris, where he lives, he wants to organize a big white march soon “to bring together as many families of victims as possible”. “I don’t want Rayan’s case to be forgotten. Above all, justice must not forget to give us information, ”he insists, sobs in his voice.
An investigation has been opened regarding Rayan. The young man had stopped his studies. “He had plans. he was oriented towards art”, specifies his father. In the meantime, he had found work, a week before his death, in a fast food restaurant, place Catinat, in Lille. On Sunday evening, after the service, he had gone on a trip with colleagues. First at the Atomic, rue Solférino, then at the Base Camp, not far from there, rue Masséna. Two bars located in the most festive area of Lille. How did he then end up near the Deûle? “He lived on the other side of Lille, he had nothing to do near this canal”, laments his father. The same story that sadly seems to repeat itself.