Tried on Wednesday for the serious road accident he caused under drugs last year in Seine-et-Marne, comedian Pierre Palmade said he was “overwhelmed” by the serious injuries inflicted on the victims. He asked them for “forgiveness”.
“”The serious injuries of MY and the trauma of Mrs. C. (who lost her six-month-old fetus, editor’s note), that knocked me down. I am truly overwhelmed, distressed to see them in real life,” declared the 56-year-old artist at the Melun criminal court for his first public expression in this highly publicized affair.
Turning towards the benches of the civil parties, his hand on his stomach, little childish eyes in the middle of a livid face, Pierre Palmade addressed them directly to “ask for forgiveness from the depths of (s) we be.”
“Inexcusable”
“I understand their anger. A crazy drug addict crashed into them, it’s inexcusable,” conceded the comedian, who became a showbiz pariah with this affair which revealed the dark side to the general public and the decline of an artist stuck for years in his drug addiction, to the point of no longer being able to work.
This Friday, February 10, 2023, Pierre Palmade had been partying continuously without sleeping for three days between Paris and his country house in Cély-en-Bière, alternating injections of 3-MMC (a synthetic drug), taking cocaine and parties. of “chemsex” with “sex friends”.
“We are really like zombies, vegetables, naked, bloody,” he describes to the judges. Dozed by 3-MMC, he “wakes up” again with new doses of cocaine to get behind the wheel.
At nightfall, the comedian gets in the car with two companions to go buy dinner at the local supermarket before the arrival of his dealer responsible for resupplying drugs.
“I see all three of us leaving the house euphoric and then it’s dark, I open my eyes and I’m (at the) Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital,” says Pierre Palmade, who says he has no memory of the accident.
According to the investigating judge, in the straight line of a departmental road, the Peugeot 3008 driven by the comedian suddenly swerved off the road and collided with a family’s car on the opposite lane.
“In sick”
In addition to the actor, the accident left three seriously injured from the same family: a 38-year-old man, his six-year-old son and his 27-year-old sister-in-law, who lost the baby she was expecting after the impact.
One road injury accident among the 52,000 recorded in mainland France that year. But due to the notoriety of the accused, this collision will trigger a media-judicial drama of rare intensity.
On his hospital bed, Pierre Palmade’s relatives explain to him that he hit a vehicle while driving in the wrong direction. There, “I understand that I am in hell,” he testifies.
In the morning, the comedian was confronted in the courtroom with the story of the broken lives of the victims of the family of the car opposite.
Six months pregnant at the time of the accident, the woman sitting in the front passenger seat underwent an emergency cesarean section. Her unborn daughter, named Solin, was declared dead after 32 minutes of resuscitation, without giving any sign of extra-uterine life.
“It is very difficult for me to be present today in this room, there is a lot of work being done with my psychiatrist,” declared the woman who is now the mother of a two-month-old daughter, after a “pregnancy very painful.”
According to consistent case law from the Court of Cassation which has ruled on similar cases of road accidents, a child who is not born alive does not exist as a legal person.
Despite the prosecution’s requests to prosecute Pierre Palmade for involuntary manslaughter, the investigating judge sent him back to court on the sole charge of involuntary injuries, aggravated by taking drugs.
Pain and injuries
With his left arm in a sling, advancing towards the bar with infinite slowness while leaning on a crutch, driver Yuksel Y. aa describes his new life circumscribed by pain and injuries.
“I was a team leader, I had friends, during the weekend I tried to enjoy with my children, my family (…), today I can no longer do this kind of thing” , he testified via a Turkish interpreter.
Pierre Palmade is a repeat offender due to a conviction in 2019 for drug use. He faces a sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment and a fine of 200,000 euros.
