A 15-year-old minor and a 28-year-old man will soon be tried for the fire in a business which in August affected the police station in the Nîmes district of Pissevin, plagued by drug trafficking, the city’s prosecutor’s office said on Friday. . Six people aged 15 to 28, including three minors, known for drug trafficking, were taken into custody on Tuesday, suspected of having participated in the night of August 20 to 21, in the fire which ravaged a premises adjoining this brand new police station, not yet inaugurated, in the Pissevin district, one of the poorest in France.
“At the end of the arrests, four people in custody against whom no serious or consistent evidence was found were released,” said the Nîmes prosecutor, Cécile Gensac, in a press release. Two people in custody were, however, presented to the public prosecutor on Thursday.
The first, a 28-year-old man, was to be tried on Friday in immediate appearance by the criminal court for “damage or deterioration of the property of others by means dangerous to people, as a repeat offender”. At the hearing, however, he “requested time to prepare his defense” and will finally be judged on January 10. Kept in pre-trial detention, he faces up to 10 years of imprisonment.
The 15-year-old minor will be judged on December 2 for “intentional damage by dangerous means for people”, but also for “driving without a license” and “without insurance”. In the meantime, he was placed in a reinforced educational center as part of his judicial review.
The new police station, which has still not been inaugurated, was promised by the Minister of the Interior at the time, Gérald Darmanin, the day after the tragic death of a 10-year-old boy, Fayed, victim of a stray bullet a few steps away in August 2023.
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Concerning the fire, the investigation quickly determined that the disaster had been caused “by a massive spread of fuel via the chimney of a butcher’s shop then under construction”, next to the police station, whose building had been “affected in its solidity by the consequences of the fire”, according to the Nîmes public prosecutor’s office.
