At this stage, “no element implicates the police officers” declared the prosecutor.
Two 21-year-old men died in a road accident after a chase with the police on the outskirts of Nantes, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, we learned on Wednesday from the public prosecutor of Nantes. These two young men, from Béganne and La Roche-Bernard in Morbihan, were not known to the police.
Around 3:40 a.m., three police officers on patrol spotted a vehicle stopped on the road near the sensitive district of Dervallières, in Nantes.
The vehicle “accelerated strongly”
“The two people on board seemed particularly young and their vehicle started at low speed with a seemingly hesitant drive,” said prosecutor Renaud Gaudeul at a press conference.
Faced with their lack of reaction, the police activated their flashing lights and then their two-tone siren and tried several times to stop the vehicle, which continued to drive at very low speed. The car then “accelerated very strongly”, going up to 140 km / h, according to Renaud Gaudeul. She thus crossed the city center of Sautron at more than 100 km / h, detailed the prosecutor.
At a road lined with trees in Saint-Herblain, the police reduced their speed to 80 km / h in front of its dangerousness. They then lost sight of the vehicle several times until they realized that it had violently hit a tree on a bend.
Upon their arrival, the officials could only note the death of the driver and then of his passenger a few moments later.
“No element implicates the police officers”
The audio recordings with the command room show a trip of 12 kilometers in total, including 10 at very high speed in six minutes, said the prosecutor.
The autopsies of the two young men will take place on Thursday and Friday and toxicological examinations will be carried out.
“We do not know why they were in Nantes that night,” added the prosecutor, considering that at this stage, “no element implicates the police officers”.
“The instructions to the police are very clear in the face of a refusal to comply, there is no question of endangering the lives of others and that was not the case in this situation,” said the magistrate. According to him, there were 256 refusals to comply in the Nantes agglomeration in 2022.
