Fall on the Tour de France: the fear, the shame and the apologies of the spectator in front of the court – Le Télégramme

She is a rather frail 31-year-old woman, trembling with trembling hands, her hands clasped as if to ask for forgiveness, sometimes on the verge of sobs, wearing dark pants and a waistcoat. appeared this Thursday, October 14 at the bar of the Criminal Court of Brest. The same one who appeared on the screens of millions of viewers around the world on June 26, in a fluorescent yellow jacket and green cap with a large visor, wearing a cardboard marked with the message “Go Opi-Omi!” “ turned towards the France 2 camera.

Made the day before to greet his grandparents from Germany, the sign and its carrier (who will still have an injury to his left elbow) would collide with the French runner, Tony Martin, resulting in the fall of about thirty professional cyclists of the Tour de France on the asphalt of the RD30 crossing the town of Sizun.

“It was going so fast”

“They fell to over 40 km / h. They took twenty minutes to get up. On arrival (45 km further, in Landerneau), we saw runners in tatters, wounds, fractures, ”rewound Me Romuald Palao, lawyer for the National Union of Professional Cyclists (UNCP) and the union Associated Professional Cyclists (CPA), both of whom were civil parties.

The spectator will remain marked for life: “It’s the opposite of me. I love sport, I know the deprivations that this implies. It was not my intention to hurt them, to break their careers, assures, at the helm, this inhabitant of Lampaul-Guimiliau (29), currently unemployed. I thought I was further back from the road. It was going so fast, all these cries of joy, I gave in to my very punctual obsession to show my sign to the camera ”.

“A real lynching” on social networks

The box and the spectator will then disappear from the screen. In front of the judge, however, she repeats having remained on the spot: “I know that I have committed something stupid. I’m waiting for everyone to leave to cross the road again ”. The two counts of appearance – “unintentional injuries” and “endangering the life of others” – do not include the aggravating circumstance of hit and run.

The first two days, I was prostrate with shame and fear with all this media frenzy

“Why did you wait three and a half days to report you to the gendarmerie?” », Then questions President Jublin. “The first two days, I was prostrated with shame and fear with all this media frenzy.” The outburst of hatred, witch hunts and threats against him, on social networks, was enough to paralyze. “A media circus, a real lynching,” said the defense lawyer.

Awaiting pedagogical effect

“Perhaps too far in the media, but the facts are established,” retorted his counterpart representing civil parties. “But I appreciate that the defendant expressed her apologies to the runners. This case must have an educational effect so that such facts do not recur, ”hopes Me Palao, asking the court for a symbolic € 1 penalty for compensation for each of his two clients.

Inviting to “replace these facts in the scale of seriousness of offenses (which ultimately falls under the highway code, Editor’s note) and to take into account the personality of the accused”, the prosecutor Solenn Briand asked “a warning sentence of four months’ suspended imprisonment ”. The court will deliver its judgment on December 9.