Three young men in their twenties were sentenced by the Rennes court on Tuesday for having set fire to a field in Saint-Aubin-d’Aubigné in Ille-et-Vilaine. Thursday, July 21, in the evening, a local resident had seen them and had alerted the firefighters, the three suspects had been arrested in the process and placed in police custody. Tried in immediate appearance on Tuesday, the three received community service, one of them also received a suspended prison sentence.
“We didn’t expect it to take on such proportions”
In the courtroom the three young men follow one another at the bar, their explanations are not clear and everyone has their own version. One evokes a badly extinguished cigarette butt causing a first outbreak of fire which he quickly stops. For the rest, he claims to have nothing to do with it. Another explains that they were all playing with their lighters when grass clippings caught fire. “It was stupid given the weather but we didn’t expect it to take on such proportions”he testifies.
That evening the firefighters noted two fire starts. 125 square meters of fields and 1360 square meters of communal orchard next to it burned. A resident who witnessed the scene said he heard laughter. The defendants deny.
When the flames started to spread they say they were scared but none of them called the fire department. The judge did not fail to point this out, recalling during the hearing the damage caused by the fires in Gironde and in the Monts d’Arrée. “Fortunately there was no wind”insists the magistrate, because the situation could have been much worse.
70 hours of community service
The three defendants were sentenced to 70 hours of community service. Two of them must carry them out within 18 months under penalty of two months in prison. The third, suspected of having triggered the most significant outbreak of fire, must carry them out within the next two years and has been sentenced to 5 months suspended prison sentence, with an obligation to work, care and to compensate the victims.
The town hall of Saint-Aubin-d’Aubigné had instituted civil proceedings, claiming just under 600 euros for the damage caused in its orchard. A symbolic sum that the three defendants were ordered to pay him. “It was mostly to raise awareness among young people who have made mistakes of this importance”, justifies Jacques Richard, the mayor of Saint-Aubin-D’Aubigné.