“A dramatically simple case,” according to the lawyer of the motorist suspected of having killed a cyclist last Tuesday in Paris. The 52-year-old man who drove an SUV was indicted and imprisoned on Friday, in accordance with the requirements of the prosecution, which insisted on “disturbing public order”. “Someone is dead, in the middle of the street, and this moves the French people.”
“I never wanted to run him over,” the driver defended himself. “I’m sorry about what happened. I have never been a thug, I have never associated with thugs,” Ariel M. assured again during a hearing before a liberty and detention judge. After crying several times during the proceedings, the man with graying hair remained silent when the magistrate ordered his incarceration.
A “quiet family man” and “believer”
“The disturbance to public order is obvious, but it is involuntary homicide,” said the motorist’s lawyer, Franck Cohen. The latter pleaded that it was “a maneuvering error or a loss of control of the vehicle in the stress and anguish of a conflict situation from which he was trying to extricate himself”, he pleaded. .
Me Cohen brushed aside the dangerous profile outlined by the prosecutor. “He is a quiet father of four children, two of whom are dependent, who took his 17-year-old daughter to an appointment with the ophthalmologist.” His client “stopped” when he saw “in the retro” that a crowd had formed. When he saw the young man on the ground, “he tried to resuscitate him, there was no hit-and-run. He would never have run away, he is a very religious man,” stressed Mr. Cohen.
A damaged version
Seven testimonies, however, undermine the driver’s version of this tragedy, which took place Tuesday at 5:45 p.m., on Boulevard Malesherbes, in the 8th arrondissement. According to these testimonies and the use of video surveillance, “the driver of the vehicle was going up the cycle path for 200 meters and would have driven over the foot of the cyclist who was on his left”, the prosecution reported at the end of his custody on sight.
The young man, Paul Varry, “knocked on the hood to alert the driver, who initially backed away, freeing his foot,” continues the public prosecutor.
“The cyclist had dropped his bike and positioned himself at the front left of the car, showing his displeasure. The driver then turned his wheels towards the pedestrian and resumed driving forward in his direction,” he added. “The autopsy confirmed the marks of the body being crossed by the vehicle” and “the video surveillance shows an elevation of the front, then the rear of the left side of the vehicle”, specified the prosecution.
