The small private plane on board which were the 28-year-old player and the pilot had crashed in the English Channel on January 21, 2019, in difficult weather, while the FC Nantes striker was joining Cardiff where he had just been. transferred for 17 million euros.
The body of the player, whose disappearance had moved the world of football, had been found in the carcass of the device more than two weeks after the accident, 67 meters deep.
The body of the 59-year-old pilot has not been found.
David Henderson, 67, who organized the flight, was sentenced in mid-November to 18 months in prison for hiring a pilot he knew was unqualified and for carrying a passenger without valid authorization.
But in addition to this criminal trial, had been opened, as provided for in the British judicial system, an "inquest" procedure intended to determine the causes of the footballer's death.
After five weeks of hearing, the jury gathered in a court in Dorset (south of England) found, as the medical examiner had concluded, that the footballer died of injuries to the head and chest, but that he was probably deeply unconscious after being asphyxiated by toxic levels of carbon monoxide from the aircraft's malfunctioning exhaust system during this unauthorized commercial flight between France and Wales.
The carbon monoxide hypothesis had been raised in the British Air Accident Investigation Bureau's final report, published in March 2020. It considered that the pilot had "probably" been poisoned with carbon monoxide by the exhaust of the motor.
Il aurait perdu le contrôle de l'appareil lors d'une manoeuvre effectuée à une vitesse trop élevée avant que l'avion s'abîme en mer à une vitesse de 270 miles par heure (435 km/h), ne laissant aucun espoir de survie.
© 2022 AFP