This gendarme will never forget the moment he called out to David Patterson: “I told him, in his eyes, that he had killed a young girl.
He replied, with a cold air and with a grin:
It's a shame.
"
The Assize Court of Seine-et-Marne, in Melun, which judges David Patterson for assassination and attempted assassination, heard, this Tuesday, the gendarmes and firefighters intervened on the first rue du Commerce, in Sept-Sorts, on the evening of August 14, 2017.
If, at the beginning, the emergency services thought they were going to “have a road accident with an imprisoned person”, they quickly understood that they were intervening on the scene of an extraordinary drama.
David Patterson had just launched his BMW against the terrace of the Cesena pizzeria, killing a teenage girl and seriously injuring a dozen people.
It was 8:11 pm The fate of many families in the region had just changed.
Seven minutes later, five gendarmes from the La Ferté-sous-Jouarre brigade arrived on the spot, absolutely not imagining the chaos they were about to discover.
An accused with a "frozen gaze"
The emotion of the soldier who extracted David Patterson from the BMW was palpable at the hearing.
“There were a lot of injuries on the ground.
I focused on the car in the restaurant.
A man on my left said to me:
Be careful, he's armed, he has a kalach,
”he said, in a low voice.
“We were in a period of attacks.
It was not known if the vehicle was trapped.
Inside, there was the driver, very calm, that's what struck me.
I took it out.
He complied.
We preferred to keep him away because of the crowd.
"Before returning, on several occasions, to the" icy gaze "of David Patterson:" It was like the gaze of criminals in movies.
He was calm and cold.
I had the impression he was satisfied.
How can we remain emotionless in front of this scene?
"
An image all the more bewildering as inside and outside the restaurant, the tears of the victims follow their cries, in the middle of the bloody bodies.
A second gendarme - who took out his weapon to cover his colleague at the time of the arrest - spoke to the court "of the distress and anger of people who have lost their way".
A gendarme describes a "war scene"
A third soldier, meanwhile, described what, in her words, looked like a “war scene”: “I asked for reinforcements.
It was also necessary to bring in deminers.
I asked two civilians to drive on the D603, to avoid a further accident.
The road absolutely had to be accessible to emergency services.
With my colleagues, we tried to take as many identities as possible.
"
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Same amazement among the first three firefighters, arrived in the wake of the gendarmes.
With this peculiarity that the wounded rushed towards them to ask for their help.
“They said to me:
Come this way, come this way
.
But I had to go on reconnaissance, to sort out the seriously injured, in absolute urgency, and the slightly injured.
There was a little boy with broken legs, ”described a professional firefighter.
That evening, he made an exception for little Angela, 13, who was in cardio-respiratory arrest.
He sends another firefighter to take care of her, while the reconnaissance operation is not over.
The young girl, who lies against the front bumper of the BMW in a puddle and among the debris, is moved in an emergency.
And this, in order to be able to use the defibrillator.
"I stayed with her to try to resuscitate her, for 30 minutes, until the Samu doctor told me to stop", testified the latter.
In the courtroom, about twenty civil parties listen attentively.
The testimonies fall into a leaden silence.
The parents and the older brother of Angela, welded on a small bench, attend the debates from the beginning.
The victims of Sept-Sorts will speak from Thursday.