The actor Pierre Palmade is implicated in a road accident which caused several victims on February 10, 2023. A trial takes place on November 20, 2024.
Pierre Palmade was involved in a serious road accident on February 10, 2023. While he was driving under the influence of drugs according to the first elements of the investigation revealed at the time, the comedian collided with another vehicle and left three seriously injured, including a pregnant woman who lost her unborn baby. Indicted on February 25, Pierre Palmade is tried on November 20, 2024 for “involuntary injuries” dropping the homicide charges requested by the prosecutor.
After several twists and turns linked to his pre-trial detention, Pierre Palmade was released on March 7, 2023 under judicial supervision. Having suffered a stroke – the severity of which is not known – a few weeks before this release, the actor remained in hospital until June. The 55-year-old actor asked to return to the Bordeaux addiction service on June 30, 2023, one month after leaving. A few days earlier, he had been seen in a nightclub in Bordeaux. Since this incident, he has been sober according to those close to him.
The accident which involved Pierre Palmade took place on Friday February 10, 2023, on departmental road 372, which connects Dammarie-lès-Lys to Villiers-en-Bière, in Seine-et-Marne. Pierre Palmade’s car allegedly hit a second vehicle, a Renault Mégane, in which there was a woman more than six months pregnant, her 38-year-old brother-in-law and her 6-year-old child. A third car, a Twingo driven by an 80-year-old man, then hit one of the two vehicles already involved in the accident.
According to witnesses cited by several media, including The Parisianthe car in which Pierre Palmade was driving moved into the left lane, where the vehicle driven by the pregnant woman’s brother was arriving in the opposite direction. Witnesses claim to have seen two people get out of the vehicle driven by Pierre Palmade and flee after the collision.
Following the accident, Pierre Palmade tested positive for cocaine and substitute drugs. The alcohol test was negative. He was indicted on February 27, 2023 for “homicide and involuntary injuries resulting in total incapacity for work of more than three months, by a driver under the influence of narcotics” following the death of the child carried by the pregnant woman. At the end of May 2024, however, the charge of manslaughter was dropped. Pierre Palmade must be tried on November 20, 2024 for “unintentional injuries”.
In total, including the comedian, five people were injured during the accident on February 10, 2023, four of whom were in serious condition on the day. Other victims included a pregnant woman who lost her baby following the shock. The driver of the vehicle that collided with that of Pierre Palmade, aged 38 at the time of the incident, was polytraumatized and was placed in an artificial coma and operated on numerous times. He remains “fractured, broken, crushed in his body”, revealed his lawyer on February 26, 2023.
The victim “will likely have difficulty walking again” and was seriously injured to several vital organs in the collision. He was still hospitalized in June 2023. His son, aged 6, had a fractured jaw and would be “disfigured” according to the families’ lawyer and could “not feed himself” in the weeks following the tragedy. He nevertheless left the hospital on February 27, 2023. Everyone remained physically and psychologically traumatized a year after the tragedy according to a Paris Match investigation. The 80-year-old man, who was in the third car, was only slightly injured in the accident.
Following the accident, Pierre Palmade’s vital prognosis was, for a time, in jeopardy. His life was no longer in danger the day after the tragedy. Placed in police custody on Wednesday February 15, 2023, the actor was indicted on Friday February 17 and placed under house arrest in the addiction department of the Paul-Brousse hospital in Villejuif, in Val-de-Marne. He had to wear an electronic bracelet connected to a receiver, while a box was installed in his hospital room. The actor was treated for his addiction problems and underwent a health check-up. While he would have been partying and taking drugs during the 24 hours preceding the accident, Pierre Palmade underwent forced withdrawal.
Saturday February 25, 2023, Pierre Palmade suffered a stroke. While he was under house arrest at the Paul-Brousse hospital in Villejuif, he was taken to the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital. Sunday March 5, 2023, he was transferred to Marie-Lannelongue hospital, in Plessis-Robinson (Hauts-de-Seine), to undergo 48 hours of treatment. Transferred to the cardio-thoracic surgery department, the actor was to undergo an operation there, according to BFM TV.
On Monday March 6, 2023, the investigating judge who is investigating the accident took the decision to lift the pre-trial detention of Pierre Palmade for medical reasons. Since then, the comedian has continued his judicial review, with the obligation to continue treatment, in the Bordeaux region. The artist was placed under house arrest in the addiction department in Bordeaux. After a nightclub outing, the comedian returned on his own to continue his detoxification treatment. According to his relatives, as the trial approaches, he is now sober.
The police officers in charge of the investigation into the accident of February 10, 2023 quickly favored the trail of excessive drug consumption, which would have taken place in a context of party mixing alcohol, drugs and sex in the hours preceding the collision . Pierre Palmade would have spent the 24 hours preceding the accident at his home with four young people, described by a relative of the comedian in the columns of Parisian like former escort boys with whom the actor has since established relationships. The accident allegedly occurred when he wanted to go buy food, with two people who were present at his home.
A search took place on Sunday February 12, 2023 at the actor’s home, in Cély-en-Bière, in order to find traces of the two fleeing passengers and to find out more about the hours preceding the accident. The public prosecutor of Melun, Jean-Michel Bourles, first affirmed that no seizure of narcotics was made during this search. According to information from Parisianhowever, the police discovered injection equipment. It later emerged that the accommodation contained a dizzying quantity of psychotropic products, including cocaine, GHB and 3MMC. Following an additional investigation, two Pierre Palmade dealers were sentenced in November 2023, including one to one year in prison.
Two witnesses fled after the accident on February 10, 2023. A man was arrested on Wednesday February 15 in Clichy, in Hauts-de-Seine. Aged 33 at the time, he is of Moroccan nationality and is said to be in an irregular situation. Suspected of also being one of the passengers in Pierre Palmade’s vehicle, a second man surrendered of his own free will. He was 34 years old at the time of the events and is known to the police for drug trafficking. Both were said to have been, with two other people, at Pierre Palmade’s home the day before the accident.
The Sunday newspaperrevealed, Saturday February 18, 2023, that one of the two men present in the car was sentenced eight days before the accident to one year in prison for drug trafficking. Thus, his conviction was pronounced on February 2, 2023 and was accompanied by a three-year probationary suspension. Among the conditions of the reprieve was a ban on contacting Pierre Palmade…
This is one of the key questions in this affair. Was the unborn baby of the woman hit by Pierre Palmade’s vehicle born alive after the accident? The comedian’s charge, prosecuted for “injuries” and especially “involuntary manslaughter” seems to suggest this. However, “a medical expertise, carried out during the investigation, concluded that the child had died in utero, therefore before childbirth. Which, in theory, should deprive him of the legal status of being alive”, indicated the Parisian one year after the events.
In French law, the fetus is not considered a person. We can therefore only speak of “involuntary homicide” if the child was born and breathed before dying. But the Melun public prosecutor’s office considered in its indictment that “this child was indisputably viable when the accident occurred [et] that there is a direct and certain causal link between the public road accident suffered by [la mère de l’enfant] and the death of his child.
