What happened in Cholet (Maine et Loire) during the July 14 fireworks? A 7-year-old boy and his 24-year-old sister were killed in a “shooting incident”. A third person is seriously injured. An investigation is opened in particular for manslaughter and will have to determine the precise circumstances of the dramatic accident.
>> July 14 fireworks in Cholet: five questions about the accident that killed two people
An element returns among the witnesses of the drama. According to their experience in Cholet, it was the first time that spectators could access the fire so close, almost vertically to the rockets. “We were sincerely much too close”says a witness to franceinfo on Friday.
The fireworks were fired from stabilized ground near the Jean-Bouin stadium in Cholet and the access conditions are the focus of the investigation today. All the spectators who witnessed the fireworks, present at the place where the rockets exploded, are formal: no security device prohibited access, even to the fence around the field.
Jocelyne and her husband arrived Thursday evening first, around 10 p.m. “We placed ourselves very close to where the fireworks are set up, behind the fencesays Jocelyn. We stopped there for a while. And afterwards, there is a gentleman who passed by telling us to step back a little bit from there to avoid projections. This unidentifiable “gentleman” at this stage, according to Jocelyne, no longer showed up as spectators arrived in successive waves.
The public prosecutor of Angers, Éric Bouillard, held a press conference on Friday morning. He opened an investigation for homicides and involuntary injuries. A survey in three parts: a first part on the issue of security and access to the premises. “This is the central question in the investigation and inevitably, we have questions about the distance of the public from the launch pad. The artificer is about a hundred meters from the launch pad. And he told us that normally, where the public is, according to him, there should be no public.” Because for the public prosecutor, knowing who decides with the local authorities on the removal of the public, “that’s the whole question” and “this is one of the main axes of our checks”.
The investigation will also have to focus on technical considerations, such as whether the explosion which caused the death of two people is linked, as witnesses claim, to an explosion of a fire storage box. fireworks placed in direct proximity to the public. Another hypothesis, an incident on pyrotechnic blocks, these boxes which make it possible to send projectiles in a synchronized way, and the firing of a rocket towards the public which would have exploded while falling. Forensic science is still working to clarify these scenarios. For the time being, no one has been taken into custody and the artificers have been heard.
The town hall does not have the same version as the public prosecutor at all. Tuesday, the mayor of Cholet, Gilles Bourdouleix, assures him “there are security conditions that must be respected. It is not up to us to set them. It is up to the company that makes the fireworks, which then tells the organizer the security measures that must be taken”he explained on franceinfo. “No one questioned the security conditions at the time.insisted the mayor. He also specified that the municipality was not the organizer of the fireworks, but “the local festival committee.”
According to information from franceinfo, the event provider, the Breton pyrotechnics company HTP gave (nearly a month and a half ago) all the necessary information concerning the security perimeter to the Cholet festival committee. These specifications, validated by the administrative police of the Maine-et-Loire prefecture, indicated that the first spectators had to be at a regulatory distance of at least 150 meters from the shooting blocks.
In a press release, published on Friday, HTP mentioned a malfunction during the firing resulting in the projection of the products contained in the tubes in the direction “of an area prohibited to the public, opposite the spectator area”. The six professionals on site intervened immediately, assured the company. According to the fireworks, it was at this time that they discovered spectators in this area prohibited to the public. But who was to secure this area? The local festival committee? The town hall ? The pyrotechnics company? That will be up to the investigation to determine.