This Sunday, the taxi driver who transported the two men who were in Pierre Palmade’s car at the time of the accident, testified on BFMTV. He notably helped to identify the two passengers to the police.
Nine days after Pierre Palmade’s accident, the course of the two men who were with the comedian in his car becomes clearer. This Sunday, the driver of the taxi who would have transported them from the country house of Pierre Palmade to their Parisian home testifies on BFMTV.
The latter, specializing in the transport of personalities, claims to be “often required to drive Pierre Palmade”. After arriving in front of his house, around 8 p.m., he waited five minutes before seeing one of the two passengers coming towards him. “We are waiting for someone else”, he would have told him, before returning to the house to look for the second passenger, who was taking “time to get out”.
“It seemed a bit strange to me. When I asked them where they were going, they said ‘Paris’, but without knowing where”, continues the taxi driver.
“They didn’t talk to each other”
After taking them to Châtelet, he left one of them near Rambuteau (between the 3rd and 4th arrondissements) and another at Max Dormoy (18th). The two men each had a bag, of medium size, which they kept with them. “One was on his phone, the other looked tired, shocked and wearing sunglasses in the car in the middle of the night.”
“They did not speak to each other, but simply whispered at times,” he recalls, claiming to have found their behavior “weird”.
According to him, they appeared to have “taken a shower”, “freshened up” and “changed their clothes”. “They didn’t smell of alcohol,” he adds.
Once back home, he sees that Pierre Palmade has had an accident and says to himself that “it’s weird”. The Fontainebleau gendarmerie contacted him, then the Moissy police station. On February 14, he went to the police station first, where he was asked to tell “from A to Z” what happened.
“They took me out a board with lots of photos, I recognized the two passengers. (…) They had everything on them, they were sure it was them. They were waiting for someone to confirm that it were those people,” says the driver.
Status of assisted witnesses
The two passengers, aged 33 and 34, were not indicted, but placed on Friday under the status of assisted witnesses. They are accused of not assisting anyone in danger. The two men fled the scene of the tragedy after the shock. One of them finally surrendered and the other was arrested several days later in Clichy-la-Garenne, in the Hauts-de-Seine.
One of the two passengers, Sambou G., had been sentenced to one year in prison, with a probationary suspension of three years, for drug trafficking. And this, only eight days before the tragedy.
This sentence was accompanied by a probationary suspension of three years, and therefore by various conditions, containing a ban on contact with the other people convicted in this case and Pierre Palmade.
However, the prosecution appealed against the judgment, effectively suspending these last bans, pending the appeal trial, a judicial source told BFMTV on Sunday.
