How to judge an “involuntary error” at the origin of a “carnage”? Tuesday, at the trial of the Rochefort bus drama, the public prosecutor of La Rochelle requested a five-year prison sentence, three of which were suspended, against the truck driver whose tragic “forgetting” caused the death of six teenagers on February 11, 2016 in Rochefort, in a collision with their school bus.
“The court is faced with a real difficulty. There will be no fair, good sentence”, faced with the immense pain of the survivors and relatives of the victims, admitted the prosecutor Clément Incerti, at the conclusion of this trial for “homicides and involuntary injuries” before the criminal court. Judgment will be delivered on May 5.
The magistrate demanded the maximum sentence for these offences, accompanied by a probationary reprieve thus allowing the defendant Mathieu Saurel, aged 29, to request a sentence adjustment for the two firm years. “He is responsible for a very serious accident, he is not a murderer”, insisted the prosecutor to justify this development, in view of the personality of the young man, described as a good professional, a “healthy” boy who “does not didn’t drink, didn’t smoke”.
The public prosecutor also requested an obligation of care and work as well as an additional penalty, the cancellation of his driving license and the prohibition to seek a new issue for 2 years.
– This “cursed tailgate” –
“It is a human error which is at the origin of the accident and not a technical failure” specific to the truck, underlined the prosecutor, recalling that the ex-employer of Mathieu Saurel, Eiffage, benefited from a dismissal.
On the day of the accident, in the early morning of February 11, Mathieu Saurel “failed to close the tailgate (of his dump truck)” and to do a visual check of his vehicle “before resuming the road”, recounted the magistrate.
An oversight with terrible consequences because this metal part intended to hold the load in place on the side, which had been left open in a horizontal position at 90 degrees, had literally sheared the side and crushed the seats of a school bus which was coming in the direction reverse, with fifteen young people on board. Among them, six teenagers aged 15 to 18 were killed and two other young people seriously injured.
For two days – instead of three initially planned – the court immersed itself in the story of lives turned upside down by the improbable shock between the bus and this truck which was traveling with the tailboard open, while it was still dark and raining. “Like the others, our life has been split in two, there is our life before the accident and our life after. We are in survival, we continue, we have no choice”, testified Mathieu Coupeau who raised with his brother the youngest of the siblings, Bastien, after losing their young parents. Today, he claims to be in “total panic” when his daughters have to take the school bus.
“We are in the kingdom of the unjust, we judge an involuntary crime, the harder it is to judge the one who looks like us”, recognized the lawyer for the defendant Thierry Sagardoytho, paying tribute to the victims.
Despite his obvious error, the defendant, still psychologically monitored and under treatment, sometimes referred to a “black hole” or a “traumatic blur” saying he was unable to remember having left this “cursed tailgate” open. In front of the packed house scheduled to receive 42 civil parties, he expressed his “deep regrets” for the first time, his face twisted by tears.
“We do not understand his omission when we put it in perspective with the enormous mess of the drama”, admitted Thierry Sagardoythou, before calling on the court to be in “the nuance”.