The police custody of four men suspected of being involved in the Sunday attack on a bus driver in Bayonne, currently brain dead, was extended Monday evening, the Bayonne prosecutor said on Tuesday 7 July .
Read also: Bayonne: a bus driver in a brain-dead state after a "barbaric" attack
The custody of a fifth suspect, a 34-year-old man arrested Sunday evening shortly after the assault, is scheduled to end the day. As they announced on Monday by exercising their right of withdrawal, the bus drivers of the Chronoplus network did not resume work on Tuesday morning and the circulation of buses in the agglomeration of Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) is still highly disturbed. They do not intend to resume driving before the funeral of their colleague.
The attack took place Sunday after 7:00 p.m. at a bus stop in a popular district of Bayonne, at the mouth of the Adour. Philippe Monguillot, a 59-year-old bus driver, was beaten by one or more passengers and seriously wounded in the head after refusing the climb to a man without mask accompanied by a dog and asked, at the same time, to four passengers, who were already on the bus without wearing a mask, to get out.
"We (drivers), we are buffers, and necessarily, we pick up"
This driver of " Tram'bus ", a long articulated vehicle, was transported unconscious in a hospital in Bayonne, where he was still on Monday evening in intensive care. The driver's vital prognosis " remains engaged ", according to the prosecution, which entrusted the investigation to the police station in Bayonne. A call for witnesses was launched to clarify the origin of the altercation and its development.
A meeting planned for Tuesday between the union representatives of Chronoplus and Pierre-Marie Ditte, director of the delegate Keolis, should make it possible to evoke " proposals " to meet the requirements of drivers in terms of improving safety on Chronoplus lines , assured Laurent Weber, CGT union representative. " We feel the aggressiveness " of people, lamented Joseph Uhart, bus driver and union representative FO. " We (drivers), we are buffers, and necessarily, we pick up ". Philippe Monguillot " was a whole guy who loved respect, who liked the right side, who could not stand injustice ", he added. " He fought all his life for that and he left his life for that ".
