The skull and both hands covered in bandages, Adam (
first name changed
) slowly walks up to the bar of the Beauvais court.
Looking at him, one might think he was a victim of a particularly violent assault.
However, it is as an accused that the young man prepares to face the questions of the judges.
Because the 1st and 2nd degree burns that cover part of his body are the scars of the fire that he himself caused last October 13, by setting fire to the vehicle of a childhood friend.
That day, after leaving school in Paris, Adam goes to a gas station to fill plastic bottles with unleaded 95. He has been ruminating about a sum for several weeks now. money - 400 euros in total - which he loaned in April to a friend he has known since college.
"He was to reimburse me in August," he says.
Problem, the money never arrives.
“The whole month I still trusted him and told myself he was having problems.
"
His clothes catch fire
Despite Adam's reminders, the friend no longer responds to messages.
"Arrived in October, I ended up telling myself that he had betrayed me," blows the defendant.
Not supporting the idea, he decides to make his childhood friend pay in his own way.
“I knew he used his vehicle a lot,” he says.
It is therefore with his bottles of gasoline that he makes the trip to La Houssoye, a small town of 600 inhabitants where his friend lives at his parents' home.
Read alsoThe Oise, land of burnt vehicles
At night, he found the car and poured the contents of the bottles inside the passenger compartment through a window that was broken.
He then sets fire to a sheet of paper which he throws in the car.
The flashback is such that Adam throws himself to the ground, where he rolls around in an attempt to extinguish the flames that consume his clothes.
He takes off his pants, also burnt and runs in the direction of a field where he hears a big boom.
At this point, he feels the intensity of the burns and sees parts of his skin "crack".
After his misdeed, hitchhiked ... by gendarmes
This does not prevent him from strolling on a departmental road to find a way back home, in the Val-d'Oise. After a few minutes, a car stops at his level and brings the young man inside. It is the gendarmes who at the smell of the passenger understand that something is wrong. In view of his injuries, he was taken to the burns departments of the Saint-Louis hospital in Paris.
After having told the story of this evening, the president of the court Catherine Tutrice wonders about the "contrast between the nature of the facts and the personality" of the accused.
Because at 18, Adam is what one could call a young good in any respect.
Eldest son in a "loving" family, he joined - after obtaining a bac S with distinction - a preparatory class for engineering schools in a prestigious high school where he was among the best students.
"He did not measure the consequences at all"
“Initially, he was assimilated to a drug trafficker who comes to settle accounts,” underlines the prosecutor, Aude Laroyenne. But no, Adam doesn't have the slightest mention of his criminal record. For the scholarship student who saw the amount of his allowance drop this year from 300 to 200 euros, it was not so much the money that pushed him to turn into an arsonist for one night. "It is above all the feeling of betrayal, of frustration", recognizes the one that the court sentenced to 8 months in prison suspended.
"He is someone who grew up with strong principles and who must have found it hard to imagine that everyone does not have the same values as him", argues his lawyer, Me Emmanuelle Grevot.
For her, the young man has shown a "certain immaturity".
“He did not at all measure the consequences or the risks for him, as for the others.
He does not even know what fuel to take to ignite a car when unleaded 95 is the most flammable ", adds Me Grevot, for whom Adam is a" brilliant student "who was" stupid ", but is" not a delinquent ”.