An imposing crowd gathered in front of the TGI in Paris this Tuesday, at the end of the day, in memory of Adama Traoré. Since the death of this young 24-year-old black man on July 19, 2016, almost two hours after his arrest in Beaumont-sur-Oise (Val-d'Oise), a real battle of legal and medical expertise has been raging. The latest, mandated by the family of Adama Traore, validates the thesis of an asphyxiation during the immobilization of the young man by the police, according to information from the Parisian .
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On July 19, 2016, Adama Traoré was arrested at the end of a chase, after having escaped a first arrest, on a hot day. He was immobilized by three gendarmes and then taken to the Persan barracks, where he died almost two hours after his arrest. Since then, four forensic examinations have been conducted in an attempt to determine the causes of death. The first, an expert appraisal dating from September 2018, had first concluded that "the vital prognosis was committed irreversibly before the arrest" , exonerating the three gendarmes. While the judges were preparing to dismiss the case, the family of Adama Traoré then poured a second expert report carried out by a doctor who attributed the young man's death to "an acute asphyxia syndrome", calling into question the technique arrest of gendarmes.
At the end of May, a new medical expertise, this time ordered by the investigating judges responsible for the case, removed the responsibility of the gendarmes and their technique of arrest. "Adama Traoré did not die from positional asphyxia, but from cardiogenic edema," conclude the doctors cited by AFP. "We do not find any obvious pathology explaining this cardiogenic edema , " add the expert doctors. “However, the combination of pulmonary sarcoidosis (rare pathology, editor's note), hypertrophic heart disease and sickle cell trait (a genetic disease, editor's note) could probably have contributed to this in the context of intense stress and effort. physical, under high concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol " , the active ingredient of cannabis, wrote the experts according to AFP.
The family of Adama Traoré then mandated a new expert for a fourth expertise, the second private. According to information from the Parisian , the professor of doctor, specialist in systemic diseases, analyzed the documents in the file. "The death follows an asphyxial syndrome, which follows a cardiogenic edema , " he wrote in his conclusions of June 2, according to Le Parisien . According to him, this edema would itself follow "a positional asphyxia by the ventral plating" which resulted in "the positioning in body hindering the normal exchange of gas and with the impossibility of releasing from this position" . The expert thus pronounced himself in favor of a death "following an asphyxial syndrome by ventral plating" , a thesis defended by the family of the young deceased man. According to the family's lawyer, the report was placed in the investigation file.
