The driver implicated in the death of three young emergency police officers, Sunday morning in the North, was positive for alcohol and cannabis, announced Monday, May 22, the prosecutor of the Republic of Lille, Carole Etienne. This man, born in 1999 and died during the collision, and his passenger, born in 2001 and seriously injured, were unfavorably known to the police for consumption of alcohol, use of narcotics and insults, had communicated, the day before, to the Agence France-Prese (AFP) a police source.
The public prosecutor of Lille has opened an investigation for homicide and involuntary injuries. During a press conference at the end of the day on Monday, Ms. Etienne said that "the first elements of the investigation confirm the hypothesis of a frontal impact" in an access ramp, "which would be due to the fact that the car, an Alfa Romeo, "would have gone the wrong way."
"To our knowledge (...) there has been no fault committed by the police", declared at midday the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, after a visit to the police station of Roubaix, on which the three victims depended. The police crew "circulated normally with a flashing light," said the director general of the national police, Frédéric Veaux.
Mr. Darmanin announced that a tribute would be paid to the officials by the end of the week, without specifying the day of this ceremony. The three officers, two men and a woman, were 24 and 25 years old.
The minister's entourage specifies that President Emmanuel Macron "has decreed that a speech of tribute to the police be read in all police stations, gendarmerie brigades, prefectures and sub-prefectures". A minute of silence has already been observed at the start of the session on Monday afternoon in the National Assembly.
"Life was ahead of them"
"Life was ahead of them," said Gérald Darmanin, who spoke of "this child who will be one year old and who will not know his father" or "this pregnant woman who will not be able to present her future child to her dad. ". A young woman in the police vehicle was seriously injured. According to Mr. Darmanin, the police were driving her to the hospital for "examinations" and "to help her to be able to file a complaint" because she had been "victim of violence".
Local elected officials, deputies and residents came to lay flowers on Monday morning at the foot of the imposing brick building of the Roubaix central police station. Twelve members of the security forces have died over the past fifteen years in deadly accidents for the security forces, the last of which, which occurred on April 11 in the Landes, cost the lives of two gendarmes who were trying to control a vehicle traveling dangerously at high speed.
