Mayor Gilles Bourdouleix and the pyrotechnician will be tried in February for involuntary manslaughter and injuries

A shooting accident during the 2022 National Day fireworks display in Cholet left two people dead and one seriously injured.

At the end of a preliminary investigation lasting more than two years, the prosecutor of Angers (Maine-et-Loire) announced in a press release that he had referred the matter to the Angers criminal court where the mayor of Cholet will be tried from February 24 to 28. , Gilles Bourdouleix, and the pyrotechnician who set off a deadly firework on July 14, 2022. That evening two people from the same family lost their lives, a 25-year-old woman and her 7-year-old little brother. Several other people from the same family were injured, their parents and the young woman’s partner.

The president of the “Cholet Evénement” association which organized the fireworks and the HTP company, employer of the pyrotechnician, are also sent to trial. All will be judged for “manslaughter and injuries”indicates Éric Bouillard, the Angers prosecutor.

Mayor Gilles Bourdouleix will have to answer in court “in his capacity as mayor” because, according to the prosecutor, he is accused of “for failing to fulfill its obligations by delegating the organization of the fireworks to an association”in this case the Cholet Evènement association. According to the prosecutor, the mayor of Cholet thus neglected “to examine with the organizers, security issues falling within the police powers available to him in his capacity as mayor and by not imposing the installation of security barriers or any other means intended to ensure respect for the security zone inside which no public should be present..

“Apparently there were people who were near the stadium”Gilles Bourdouleix emphasized the day after the accident. People responsible for security, “from what I was told, would have told these people located there to move away” And “not to stay there” even “if there was no danger as such,” he reported.

The pyrotechnician and his employer, the HTP company, will be judged because they are “accused (…) of having set off fireworks while people were in an area prohibited to the public and of having used equipment that was unsuitable or in poor condition”writes the prosecutor.

Finally, the president of the Cholet Evènement association will be judged for “not having put in place a system aimed at ensuring respect for the security zone within which no public should be present and not having sufficiently drawn the attention of the mayor of Cholet to the prerogatives to implement and draw from its administrative police powers”.