Five years' imprisonment, four of which were suspended, were requested this Wednesday against Nadine O., 53, the driver of the bus that collided with a train in Millas (Pyrénées-Orientales) in 2017. Six college students who were returning home on board of this bus were killed on December 14, 2017 and 17 were injured, eight of them very seriously.
Prosecutor Michel Sastre dismissed the "fatality" in this accident, while emphasizing the "exceptional dimension of this tragedy".
He also requested the cancellation of the driving license (for tourism and passenger transport) of the driver and her prohibition to retake them for five years.
The driver has been on trial since September 19 for homicides and unintentional injuries in Marseille, whose court has a specialized center on collective accidents.
But Nadine O., has been absent from the hearings since September 22 following her hospitalization.
She had collapsed during an interrogation intended to know whether or not she had seen the barriers lowered at the level crossing where the accident occurred.
The experts and certain witnesses, in particular a young girl sitting just behind her in the bus, maintain that she passed despite the lowered barriers, which she denies.
Read alsoAt the Millas drama trial, a battle of experts around the level crossing barrier
"I remain convinced that this dramatic accident (...) is none other than the result of the distraction, the inattention of Nadine Oliveira, who crossed the level crossing without having been able to notice that the barriers were lowered", pleaded Tuesday Me Castello-Picard.
“I am here to lay before you the pain”
The drama had moved the whole of France, upset by the images of the gutted bus lying on the rails.
Ophelia, 13, Teddy, 11, Diogo, 11, Yonas, 11, Loïc, 11 and Allan, 12, had lost their lives and others had been seriously injured.
“I am here to lay before you the pain” of a young girl who suffers from “indelible scars that will accompany her throughout her life”, reported Me Castello-Picard.
His right leg amputated after the accident, he is a "victim already sentenced to life", insisted the lawyer, recalling how for this one, "on December 14, 2017 at 4:07 p.m.", his existence "brutally changed in horror”.
During the hearings, the lawyers, some on the verge of tears, spoke of the difficult reconstruction of the victims, these "miraculous", like this boy who, during his convalescence, spent his time building hospitals with legos, clinics, prisons and courthouses: "The expression, according to his lawyer Me Olivier Redon, of a real thirst for justice".
