At the Melun court, Pierre Palmade asked for “forgiveness” from the victims. The comedian's trial opened this Wednesday, almost two years later road accident which he caused under the influence of drugs. With a ravaged face, the 56-year-old artist said to himself:overwhelmed” et “proven” by the serious physical and psychological injuries caused to the victims. The accident had caused three seriously injuredincluding a pregnant woman who had lost the baby she was expecting. The comedian was on trial for aggravated involuntary injuries. The prosecution requested five years in prison, including two years.
“MY's serious injuries and MC's trauma (who lost her fetus, editor's note) knocked me down. I am truly overwhelmed, tested to see them in real life“, declared the 56-year-old artist in a hoarse voice during his first words on the stand. Turning towards the benches of the civil parties, his hand on his stomach, his face ravaged, he addressed directly to them for their “ask for forgiveness from the depths of your being“.
The man of theater and television, stuck for years in his drug addiction, returned to the circumstances which led to the accident. For three days, Pierre Palmade had been partying continuously without sleeping between Paris and his country house in Cély-en-Bière, alternating injections of 3-MMC (a synthetic drug), taking cocaine and playing “chemsex” with “sex friends”. “We're really like zombies, vegetables, naked, bloody“, he described to the judges.
3-MMC injections and cocaine lines
On Friday evening, at nightfall, the comedian gets in the car with two companions to go buy dinner at the local supermarket before the arrival of his dealer responsible for restocking drugs. Dozed by 3-MMC, he takes several lines of cocaine before getting behind the wheel in order to “wake up again”.
“I see all three of us leaving the house euphoric and then it's dark, I open my eyes and I'm (at the) Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital.“, says Pierre Palmade, who says he has no memory of the accident. According to the investigating judge, in the straight line of a departmental road, the vehicle driven by the comedian suddenly swerves on the road and goes hitting a family's car traveling in the opposite direction on the opposite lane.
On his hospital bed, “I am told that there are injured people, a family, the loss of a baby, manslaughter… Lots of words that I don't understand“, confides Pierre Palmade. “I understand that I am in hell.“
Five years in prison, two of which are required
Five years in prison, including two years, with a deferred committal warrant, were requested by the prosecution. “We cannot be too lenient when the damage has occurred and driving under the influence of drugs has caused a tragedy.”declared prosecutor Marie-Denise Pichonnier.
