Justice sentenced Friday to three years in prison, including two suspended, the mason who fatally struck the mayor of Signes (Var) Jean-Mathieu Michel in August 2019. The 76-year-old elected official had come to verbalize it after the filing wilderness of rubble in the middle of nature.
Prosecuted for “manslaughter after drug use”, because he had consumed cannabis ten hours before the accident, the worker received three years on Friday, two of which were suspended and a license cancellation.
A sentence in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecutor during the trial on March 11, 2022 at the Toulon Criminal Court.
“You are guilty of the facts with which you are charged, but it is an accident,
manslaughter with the aggravating circumstance that you had
traces of narcotics in the blood”, insisted the president, addressing the 25-year-old mason, who fled the journalists on Friday, traumatized by the media and political repercussions of this affair.
On August 5, 2019, in the middle of the afternoon, the 23-year-old mason had accidentally run over Jean-Mathieu Michel while reversing.
The mayor, who was with three other people, stopped when he saw the young man, an employee of a local construction company, dumping rubble, helped by an apprentice, along a departmental road.
The driver who was about to leave, then knocked down the elected official who was on the phone with the municipal police to have him fined. The defendant always assured during his hearings that he had not seen the victim.
“I’m sorry for what happened. It’s awful”, expressed himself timidly
the Mason at his trial on March 11.
The death of “Jeannot”, at the head of the village since 1983 had aroused great emotion and the indignation of many elected officials. The President of the Republic had promised
ensure “personally to what in the face of incivility and disintegration
(…) of the sense of the State and the nation, the answer is always firm”.
This is’“a breach, negligence, but not willful aggression,
deliberate”, “even less (the aggression) of a mayor because of his functions”,
had estimated in its indictment the public ministry.
The lawyer for the mayor’s family, civil party, Me Jean-Claude Guidicelli, had
for his part pointed out the behavior “self-centered” of the worker, who “tired”, “didn’t have
don’t want to be verbalized and really want to leave”leading him to perform
this brutal reversal.
Compensation of 15,000 euros was granted to the son of Jean-Michel Mathieu for
moral damage.