The public prosecutor of Lille has given new information on the fatal accident in Villeneuve-d’Ascq, which cost the lives of three police officers. The driver who was driving in the wrong direction, also deceased, was driving drugged and alcoholic. The news.
The Roubaix police station is still in shock. Three agents died on Sunday May 21 in a serious road accident which occurred around 7 a.m. on departmental road 700, near Villeneuve d’Ascq, in the North. The driver of the other vehicle involved in the accident also died after the impact. Two other people, passengers in the cars are seriously injured.
An investigation has been opened for injuries and manslaughter and must shed light on the circumstances of the accident. The first elements attest to an “apparently very violent collision” which drove the police vehicle “below the lane, in the ditch”, according to the public prosecutor of Lille, Carole Etienne. The director of the national police Frédéric Veaux clarified during a press briefing this Sunday that “the police car was driving normally with its flashing light on” and “that there was no reason for an accident to occur at this stadium”. “Obviously, the car that hit him was coming in the wrong direction, without this hypothesis being fully confirmed yet,” he added, relying on police and union sources and testimonies.
Four people died in the accident, including three police officers. They were young officers, two men and a woman, aged 24 and 25, members of a police rescue crew from the Roubaix police station. The three police officers were starting their careers as well as their family life for the two men: one had been a dad for almost a year and the second was expecting a child with his partner. All were respected for their work within the police station according to Arnaud Boutelier, deputy zonal secretary Alliance Police Nationale des Hauts-de-France, contacted by BFMTV: “They were very well integrated, very appreciated by their hierarchy. They had just arrived and only wanted to work. They were very happy to be in the police, they had this vocation, and today this tragedy happened”.
The Villeneuve d’Ascq accident claimed other victims: the driver of the other vehicle died while his passenger and the 16-year-old girl transported by the police were seriously injured. The latter two were admitted in absolute urgency to the Lille hospital center, but the teenager’s vital prognosis is no longer engaged. The young girl was accompanied by the police to the hospital to take samples “following an alleged sexual assault”.
If three victims of the accident are police officers, two others – those who occupied the second vehicle which was traveling in the wrong direction according to the first hypotheses – are known to the police. The driver was known in particular for acts of drug use and contempt of a person holding public authority.
