The body of a Moldovan truck driver was found at the foot of a truck, Sunday November 24, 2024, on a motorway rest area on the A36, in Ecot (Doubs). Initially deemed suspicious by the Montbéliard Public Prosecutor's Office, the death was ultimately accidental according to the autopsy report.
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Dismal discovery on the Ecot area of the A36 (Doubs), Sunday November 24. Around 8 a.m., a French truck driver found the lifeless body of another truck driver, at the foot of a truck. Strange detail, the victim, aged 40 and of Moldovan origin, no longer has shoes on his feet. A “empty whiskey bottle“and several”bottle corpses” lie next to him, indicates the public prosecutor of Montbéliard, Paul-Edouard Lallois.
The Montbéliard public prosecutor's office has opened a criminal investigation into manslaughter in order to “have all possible means of investigation” and shed light on the circumstances of this suspicious death. The victim would have spent the evening with another Moldovan driver, aged 37 and still present in the truck when the gendarmes arrived. Both worked for the same transport company. Polish transport.
Overheard by the authorities, the second driver reported having heard nothing or noticed anything abnormal. In a state of intoxication, he explains having discovered the body of his colleague without being able to explain what had happened to him.
The criminal trail is finally excluded, in favor of an accident. THE autopsy report, carried out by the Besançon medico-legal institute on Monday November 25, attests that the “lesions present on the victim's body are compatible with those of a fall“, reports Paul-Edouard Lallois.
By reconstructing the facts, it turns out that the two Moldovan drivers bought several bottles of beer and whiskey in order to drink them together in the second driver's cabin. Both were blocked on this A36 motorway area, due to a Doubs prefectural decree which prohibited the circulation of trucks weighing more than 7.5 tonnes due to difficult weather conditions.
There is no trace of a struggle to confirm the criminal hypothesis. The victim died after falling from the truck. The causes of death would be multiple according to the public prosecutor of Montbéliard: a “head trauma“, and “subdural hematoma“, that is to say bleeding inside the skull, a large quantity of alcohol ingested and loss of consciousness in the snow.
The victim's toxicological report, expected in the coming days, should confirm this accidental hypothesis.
