North: "no fault" committed by police officers who died Sunday in an accident, according to Darmanin

Lionel Gougelot with AFP 13:48 p.m., May 22, 2023

The three young police officers who died Sunday in the North in a violent road accident did not commit a fault, said Monday the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin, who announced a ceremony in tribute to them "at the end of the week in Roubaix". "To our knowledge (...) there was no fault committed by the police," said the minister at the end of a visit to the Roubaix police station, on which the three officials depended.

A tribute will be paid to them by the end of the week, he said, but the day of this ceremony has not yet been set. The entourage of the minister specifies that President Emmanuel Macron "decreed that be read a speech of tribute to the police in all police stations, gendarmerie brigades, prefectures and sub-prefectures". These three young police officers died Sunday morning in a collision between their vehicle and a car which, according to the first elements of the investigation, was driving in the opposite direction, in the Lille metropolis.

The officials, two men and a woman members of a Police Secours crew, were aged 24 and 25, according to a police source and union sources. "Life was in front of them," said Gérald Darmanin, who evoked "this pregnant woman who will not be able to present her future child to her father" or "this child who will be a year old and who will not know his father".

"The Nation thanks you"

The driver of the other vehicle involved, born in 1999, also died, while a passenger in that car, born in 2001, and a young girl in the police vehicle were seriously injured. According to Mr. Darmanin, the police brought the girl, "victim of violence, to the hospital, to be able to do examinations, to be able to help her to be able to file a complaint". Lille prosecutor Carole Etienne is scheduled to give a press conference on the investigation at 17:30 p.m. Local elected officials, deputies and residents came to lay flowers Monday morning at the foot of the imposing brick building of the central police station of Roubaix, sometimes a simple rose, AFP found.

"It's important. They are there when we need them," says Sophie, a thirty-year-old who does not wish to give her name. "It's sad... In addition they were young, it must be a shock for their family," said Ibtissem Soltani, 18, who came as a neighbour. "And then there was a young girl with them who was injured, that also touches me." In the middle of dozens of white roses, a message: "The Nation thanks you". "We remain in recollection, emotion. We want to know what happened, if the wounded were heard. It's a tragedy," said Arnaud Boutelier, deputy zonal secretary of the Alliance in the region.

A "very violent" collision

The prosecutor's office opened an investigation for manslaughter and unintentional injury. "The first elements support the hypothesis of a frontal impact" on an access ramp, "which would be due to the fact" that the third car, an Alfa Romeo, "would have engaged in the opposite direction," said Sunday Ms. Etienne to AFP. The police crew "circulated in a normal way with a rotating light", according to the director general of the national police, Frédéric Veaux, specifying that the hypothesis of a misdirection had yet to be confirmed.

The two passengers of the third vehicle "were known to the police and justice for acts of common law," he added. The prosecutor said that the "apparently very violent collision" occurred around 7:00 am, on the RD 700 at Villeneuve-d'Ascq.

Twelve members of the security forces have died over the past fifteen years in multi-fatal accidents for the police, the last of which, on April 11 in the Landes, had cost the lives of two gendarmes who tried to control a vehicle driving dangerously at high speed.