the essential
Six years after the death of Faustin Tudella, manager of the Ramierou equestrian center in Montauban, his partner, Carole B., and her ex-husband, Stéphane H., prosecuted for failure to assist a person in danger, were acquitted. The former jockey had been discovered hanged by his partner. The latter had alerted the emergency services nearly 2 hours later.
Six years after the death of the manager of the Ramierou equestrian center, Faustin Tudella, and after a judicial investigation and two trials, the Montauban judicial court acquitted Carole B. and her ex-husband Stéphane H. for failure to assist a person in danger, on July 1, 2024.
On March 27, 2018, the former jockey was discovered hanged by his partner, Carole B., in a box at her equestrian center. The couple waited nearly two hours before alerting emergency services. Carole B. even gave a riding lesson before calling emergency services an hour and forty minutes later.
President Audrey Trafi thus acquitted the couple of these facts, and sentenced Carole B. to three months in prison, suspended, for the violence committed against her former partner in 2017. She was also forced to pay a fine of 500 euros and is banned from owning a weapon for two years.
In May 2023, the couple appeared in this case for failure to assist a person in danger. The Montauban public prosecutor’s office had requested eight and three months of suspended prison sentences for each. But at the end of August 2023, instead of delivering its decision after three months of reflection, the court ordered additional information.
The coroner, called in for this additional expert assessment, confirmed that the victim’s death had been prolonged due to an incomplete hanging. “It is not excluded that when Faustin Tudella was discovered, his heart was still beating,” the expert said. Death would therefore have occurred only two to three hours after the hanging.
The two trials had highlighted the explosive climate reigning at the Écuries du Sagittaire. In addition to the financial problems within their company, the relationship between Faustin Tudella and his partner had turned hostile, punctuated by arguments and exchanges of insults. Faustin Tudella had filed a complaint against his partner shortly before his death. Carole B. allegedly hit him with a plastic fork before pushing him into a box with a young horse.
