Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credit: Valentine CHAPUIS / AFP 3:38 p.m., February 1, 2024, modified at 3:39 p.m., February 1, 2024
After the emotion and the tribute paid to a farmer and her daughter, who died at a blockage in Ariège on January 23, it is time for an investigation. The portion of the RN20, where the accident took place, was closed to traffic this Thursday to allow experts and judicial authorities to reconstruct the facts.
A reconstruction of the accident causing the death of a farmer and her teenage daughter, hit by a vehicle on a farmers' roadblock, took place Thursday in Pamiers, in Ariège, journalists from the AFP.
The intentional nature of the accident was not accepted
The portion of the expressway of the RN20 towards Foix, where the collision took place, was temporarily closed to allow experts and judicial authorities to reconstruct, with the orange vehicles of the Interdepartmental Roads Directorate (DIR), what happened on January 23 at dawn. A few dozen meters further, near the bridge overlooking the highway, a banner surrounded by flowers recalls the memory of the victims. Questioned by AFP, the Foix prosecutor's office indicated that it did not wish to communicate following this reconstruction.
The road blockade was set up on January 22 by Ariège farmers and the 36-year-old farmer died at the scene of the accident, while her husband and 12-year-old daughter were hospitalized in serious condition. The Foix prosecutor did not accept, at the start of the investigation, that this accident which occurred at dawn was intentional. The driver of the car was indicted for “aggravated manslaughter, aggravated injury and driving without insurance”.
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“The driver admitted to having circumvented the special safety device which blocked access to national road 20” and “not having realized in time the presence of the black tarpaulin which covered the straw wall”, marking the start of the roadblock where a few dozen demonstrators were gathered, the Foix prosecutor said the day after the accident. The three occupants of the car, all three of Armenian nationality, were arrested and taken into police custody immediately after the accident.
No charges were brought against the two passengers of the vehicle following their custody, but, under an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF), they were placed in a detention center administrative, before being placed under house arrest pending their expulsion. On January 27, several thousand people participated in a white march in Pamiers organized in memory of the breeder and her daughter. Their funeral was to take place Thursday afternoon in Teilhet, about fifteen kilometers from Pamiers.