For six hours this Monday afternoon, At the Rennes Criminal Court, the judges set out to find out what happened, Quai Wilson, in Nantes, on Saturday June 22, 2019 around 4 a.m. It was that night, precisely at 4:33 minutes and 14 seconds, that Steve Maia Caniço fell into the water.
The boy did not know how to swim and his body was recovered on July 29. A fall while at the same time, the police intervened with tear gas grenades. One of the DJs of the evening turned the music back on when it should have been turned off. Tensions with the police followed, then projectiles were thrown against tear gas.
“It was the apocalypse” according to a rescuer
A friend of Steve says that as soon as the police intervened, he the feeling that the situation will deteriorate. He then decides to leave the place with his little brother. It is 4:30 a.m. when he is on the Trois-Continents bridge and sees in the distance “a cloud of tear gas.”
A young man who fell into the water around 4:30 a.m., at the time of the controversial police intervention, explains that he had the “Eyes burning, we couldn’t breathe, it was panic.” To get out of the smoke bombs, he fumbles with his hand. Except that very quickly, there is the Loire and it is the fall. He will be fished out by volunteers from the SNA, mandated by the town hall that night. An Atlantic Boating Safety official explains that then “It was total confusion.”
“The air was unbreathable,” according to one of his colleagues. Questioned by the prosecutor, this young woman, in her thirties today, still seems very affected by this evening, the fact that a person “stayed in the water”. She has these strong words “it was the apocalypse, it was a war”. “All that, the war, the cloud, it’s 4:39”, would like to highlight, for his part, Me Cailliez, Commissioner Chassaing’s lawyer. He has already made it known that everything that happens after 4:33 and 14 seconds, the time of Steve’s fall, is, for him, “off topic”.
Eight falls in the Loire during and after police intervention
A little earlier before, a civil protection officialevokes that before the atmosphere was “festive”. No particular tension. For him, “his work was disrupted by tear gas.” At the time, it was his ninth music festival, and it was the first time that the context is so degraded, and he says, he has never experienced so many falls.
The president details the falls in the Loire: four to five before the intervention of the police; eight during and after. All this was recalled during certain depositions, in a poorly lit and barrier-free area.
The thesis of the accident unrelated to the action of the police for the defense
Me Cailliez, lawyer for the defendant, questions this rescuer about the presence of sleeping individuals not far from the platform. The rescuer claims not to have been paying attention. The defense thesis is that of a fall “inadvertently” of Steve who would have dozed off. A young man, according to the defense, far from the action of the police, ruling out on this basis any responsibility of the police.
Another friend of Steve, hoodie with the inscription on the back “we are not criminals” (editor’s note: we are not criminals) is questioned by Me Louis Cailliez. Steveaccording to his friend, was tired that night, because he had danced a lot and had just finished his work week. “He could have fallen even without the load” he said during the investigation. “And we were near the water”Commissioner Chassaing’s lawyer tells him.
This Tuesday, second day of trial during which must be heard by the police under the orders of Grégoire Chassaing on the night in question, as well as Thierry Palermo, interim departmental director of public security at the time.
