There are many questions the day after the fire which broke out in an HLM building in Douarnenez, after which two people died and five others were injured. Evening that got out of hand? Settling scores? The facts, first of all. One of the deceased victims, found in the first level apartment ravaged by the fire, would be the tenant of the accommodation: Éric Hobe, 61, sentenced in 2007 to three years in prison, including two years for heroin trafficking. He had been disabled for several years, most of the time bedridden, and had difficulty moving around.
Evenings that “degenerated”
The residents of the building wrote a petition last year, addressed to Douarnenez Habitat, to ask to intervene with this resident, who “had been disrupting the life of the neighborhood too often and for a long time”. Mireille, the next-door neighbor, was in the front row: “There were constant comings and goings at his house, his door was always open, with people coming from outside the neighborhood. Cans were often found in the stairwell. Regularly, evenings took place there which degenerated, with violence. We knew that one day it could end in tragedy.”
“There was fighting, it was the Wild West”
Friday evening, a party took place in Eric Hobe’s apartment. A few hours before the fire, several neighbors reported having once again heard a stormy atmosphere in the accommodation in question. Laurence occupies the apartment in the immediate vicinity. “Around 3 a.m., I jumped into bed, woken up by the noise behind the wall,” she remembers. It was screaming, it was breaking, there was a fight, I’m next door, I heard everything. It was more violent than usual, it was the Wild West.” She eventually went back to sleep. Around 6 a.m., the police came knocking on his door to evacuate him, like all the other residents of the building: “The fire was already well underway, the walls of my living room were burning.”
“Nature of the offense: intentional homicide”
Jean-Claude was the first resident to leave the building around 6 a.m., after discovering the fire from his window. He lives in the alley next to the burned one: “When I came out I was shocked by the flames, and outside, there was a man lying writhing on the lawn, he had a wound on his chest, with blood. The gendarmes arrived, took charge of him, and tried to revive him, but it was not enough.” The 44-year-old man died. His identity has not been revealed.
On the door of the burned accommodation, the seal affixed by the gendarmerie indicates this note: “Nature of the offense: intentional homicide”. When contacted, the Quimper public prosecutor’s office, which opened an investigation, did not wish to answer our questions. However, he should communicate this Tuesday, November 12, after obtaining the results of the autopsies of the victims. The latter could deliver new elements.
Belgium
