In the North, the police officers who died in an accident did not commit “fault”, according to Gérald Darmanin – France 24

Three young police officers died on Sunday morning in a collision between their vehicle and a car which, according to the first elements of the investigation, was driving in the wrong 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.

A tribute in the week

This Monday morning, Gérald Darmanin indicated that, “to our knowledge (…) there was no fault committed by the police”. “Life was ahead of them”, also underlined the Minister of the Interior, referring to “this pregnant woman who will not be able to present her future child to her dad” or “this child who will be one year old and who is not going know his father.

A tribute will be paid to the police by the end of the week, added Gérald Darmanin, but the day of this ceremony has not yet been fixed. The minister’s entourage clarified that Emmanuel Macron “decreed that a speech of tribute to the police be read in all police stations, gendarmerie brigades, prefectures and sub-prefectures”.

Flowers in front of the Roubaix police station

The driver of the other vehicle involved, born in 1999, also died, while a passenger in this car, born in 2001, and a young girl in the police vehicle were seriously injured. According to Darmanin, the police brought the young 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”.

Local elected officials, deputies and residents came to lay flowers this Monday morning at the foot of the imposing brick building of the Roubaix central police station, sometimes a simple rose.

Backwards car?

The prosecution has opened an investigation for homicide and involuntary injuries. “The first elements confirm 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 entered in the opposite direction”, indicated, on Sunday, the prosecutor, Ms. Carole Étienne.

The police crew “circulated normally with a flashing light”, according to the director general of the National Police, Frédéric Veaux, specifying that the hypothesis of a misinterpretation had yet to be confirmed. The two passengers in the third vehicle “were known to the police and the justice system for common law acts”, he added.

“Apparently very violent collision”

The prosecutor clarified that the “apparently very violent collision” had occurred around 7 a.m., on the RD700 at Villeneuve-d’Ascq.

Twelve members of the police have died over the past fifteen years in multi-murderous accidents for the police, the last of which, which occurred on April 11 in the Landes, had cost the lives of two gendarmes who were trying to control a dangerously fast-moving vehicle.