A straight road, dry pavement, without the slightest obstacle on the horizon. Mila still sees her brother-in-law's hand come to rest on the steering wheel. Headlights dazzle him, “as if they were targeting us”. The feeling of being shaken “like on a merry-go-round”. And bad, very bad, too much stomach ache. At the bar of the Melun judicial court, Wednesday November 20, Mila freezes for a moment to tell “the feeling of emptiness” which followed. Her emergency cesarean section at 27 weeks and five days pregnant. His daughter Solin, stillborn. Mila counted correctly when she hugged her: Solin had all her fingers. It weighed 1,090 grams. The accident killed her in utero.
Wednesday evening, Pierre Palmade was sentenced to five years in prison, including two years for aggravated involuntary injury. He was not prosecuted for manslaughter because if the fetus was « viable » according to experts, Solin has not shown signs of extra-uterine life and therefore does not have an established legal personality. “I am devastateddeclared Pierre Palmade, during the hearing. This is a legal debate that is beyond me. I will always have this baby on my conscience. »
On February 10, 2023 at 6:45 p.m., a head-on collision on a departmental road in Seine-et-Marne shattered the lives of Mila, then six months pregnant, and her family. The crushed body of his brother-in-law, summed up in 171 days of temporary incapacity for work, painfully takes the stand a year and a half later.
“The Brain of a Drug Addict”
Leaning on a crutch, he lists the after-effects in strings: the operations, the medications, the rehabilitation, the permanent disability of his left hand, the pain that “hit the brain”concerns about the future of his son, also seriously injured in the accident, at the age of 6. Mila adds to the consequences of the accident those of a postpartum period without a baby to cuddle. Depression, nightmares and, ” Unfortunately “, a familiar face to stick on: that of Pierre Palmade, at the wheel of the car which suddenly swerved and hit them violently.
“The accident is based exclusively on gross driving error”concluded the prosecutor in her requisitions, being decisive on “the scourge of driving under the influence of drugs”. Cocaine and various synthetic drugs were found in Pierre Palmade's blood.
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