On the evening of the collapse of the buildings on rue d’Aubagne in Marseille, which took away his mother, little El Amine “no longer had a mother, no more clothes, no more nothing”, recounted at the trial the school teacher who had hosted him.
Present at the Marseille criminal court for the first time on Tuesday, El Amine, now 15 years old, did not wish to speak but smiled at the broadcast of a photo of his mother, Ouloume Saïd Hassani, next to him, very small, on a hospital bed.
The school teacher, Chloé Herszkowicz, recounted that day of November 5, 2018, when Ms. Saïd Hassani, mother of five children, accompanied her son to school before rushing back home to collect a document for an appointment with an authority responsible for combating substandard housing.
“Nothing left”
But at 9:07 a.m., 65 rue d’Aubagne collapsed on her and her seven other occupants.
“It was unimaginable violence, he left in the morning with his schoolbag and in the evening no more mom, no more clothes, no more nothing,” described the school teacher, who hosted El Amine on several occasions after the tragedy.
Some children, who saw the collapsed building when returning home at midday that day, came back and told El Amine: “Your mother is dead.” But the eight-year-old boy “left phone messages every day” for his mother in the days that followed, “hoping that she would eventually answer,” said the school teacher.
Ouloume’s body will be the last to be found, on the evening of November 9.
Collapse of buildings on rue d’Aubagne in Marseille: 1 year later
Trauma
The school teacher like El Amine’s big brother, Imane Saïd Hassani, spoke of the violent “crises” of the child after the tragedy, who “lost everything”, “his pillar”, who wanted to “join his mother ” by “throwing himself on the metro rails”.
“We had no father, our mother was both a mother and a father to us, we all find ourselves orphans,” testified Imane Saïd Hassani.
After 25 years in Mayotte, Ouloume Saïd Hassani, 54, moved to Marseille in 2014. Coming from Paris, she liked “finding the sun, the sea, the smells of spices”, described her son, and she had “integrated very quickly”.
The trial into the collapses of two unsanitary buildings on rue d’Aubagne, which left eight people dead, is to be held until December 18.
The trial of the collapses of rue d’Aubagne opens in Marseille
