Very heavy toll in a road accident, Saturday December 21, 2024, early evening, in Mazières-en-Gâtine. Three people lost their lives in a very violent head-on collision between two cars, on the three-lane road between Parthenay and Niort (D743). In total, three people and two vehicles were involved in this accident.
It was almost 5 p.m. when the collision occurred, 200 meters from the end of the three-lane section after the Saint-Pardoux-Soutiers exit, near the place called “la Grande Roullière” in Mazières- en-Gâtine.
Very quickly, significant resources were dispatched to the site, both from firefighters (around thirty), Smur (two teams from Niort) and gendarmes from Deux-Sèvres, under the command of squadron leader Grégory Raboisson, commanding the gendarmerie company of Parthenay, which communicated an initial report showing three people whose vital prognosis was very serious.
The sub-prefect of Parthenay on site
Then, an hour later, the firefighters drew up a final assessment of three victims declared dead by the Smur doctor: an 80-year-old woman in the first vehicle; a 76-year-old man and his 75-year-old passenger in the second car. All from Deux-Sèvres, according to the first information collected on the scene.
On site, when night had fallen and traffic had to be cut off – the accident having initially caused major traffic jams – in the middle of flashing lights and intermittent rain, it was a nightmare scene. discovered by Lucas Turgis, sub-prefect of Parthenay, who arrived shortly after 6 p.m. at the scene of the tragedy.
To understand how the two vehicles could have arrived at this head-on collision while one of the cars was finishing its section of two lanes and the other coming from Niort was traveling on its portion reduced to one lane, the Parthenay gendarmes will have to try. to establish the exact circumstances which, without a witness on site, seemed inextricable.
