Twenty firefighters from Val-d’Oise mobilized in Argenteuil: Wednesday evening, the emergency services tried to find a man who had thrown himself into the Seine at the level of the Saint-Denis quay, near the A15 viaduct , to escape the municipal police of Épinay-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis). After more than two hours of searches by Paris firefighters, the lifeless body of a 25-year-old man was found at 8:05 p.m. in the same area as the one where the fugitive had disappeared, according to a source close to the ‘investigation.
It all starts with a refusal to be checked by the municipal police. A speeding vehicle takes off. This Wednesday in Épinay-sur-Seine (Seine-Saint-Denis) around 5 p.m., the recalcitrant motorist accelerated and fled. The municipal police are in pursuit. She loses track of her for a short time. Then she finds the vehicle, empty, on the towpath, along the Seine.
The man threw himself between two barges
The driver fled on foot and is still on the shore. “When he sees the municipal police, he panics and throws himself into the water between two barges,” said a source close to the investigation. At this point, they left Épinay and passed through the adjoining town of Argenteuil (Val-d’Oise) on the Quai Saint-Denis. A municipal policeman in turn jumps into the river to fish him out. But he can’t find it.
He feels that he is having difficulty and quickly comes out of the water, which is freezing cold. When the agent returns to solid ground, he is immediately taken care of. He is freezing and in a state of hypothermia. The investigation is taken over by the national police who have jurisdiction to seize the abandoned vehicle. The driver has disappeared.
In the evening, the specialized teams of firefighters, made up of about twenty professionals, carried out searches to try to find him. They mobilized six machines.
An identical incident occurred in September 2020. To escape the police, three young people got rid of their vehicle before jumping into the Seine with the aim of reaching the opposite bank and L’Île-Saint-Denis . Four police officers had dived in and managed to fish out the fugitives.