Paris.- The man who was arrested on Sunday in the afternoon for the fire that had occurred the previous morning in a residential building in the French city of Grasse (southeast) and that caused the death of three people and serious injuries to three others has acknowledged its responsibility.
The Grasse Prosecutor’s Office said Tuesday in a statement that the suspect The 47-year-old admitted during interrogations to having caused the fire, but involuntarily by throwing a lit cigarette in the corridor located at the entrance to the building.
In any case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has decided to present him before a judge with a view to charging him for various charges, in particular voluntary damages resulting in death, and will demand his entry into prison.
The man, who has no criminal record, was arrested after being identified from city video surveillance footage showing him leaving the building two minutes before the cameras detected the start of the fire, which broke out in the stairwell.
The psychiatric examination to which he has been subjected has concluded that he is fully responsible from the criminal point of view.
The first findings of an expert ruled out that the fire had an accidental origin and favored “the thesis of human intervention.”
The Prosecutor’s Office insisted that the investigation will allow the circumstances in which the events occurred to be specified.
The identity of the three fatalities (two women and one man) is also pending to be established with certainty through DNA tests, since the fire left the bodies in an unrecognizable state.
As for the three seriously injured, admitted to the Pasteur hospital, one of them was still between life and death on Monday.
