Le Figaro Lyon
To discover
Follow all the news of the city of Lyon
Barely a few tens of meters separate the footbridge of the Palais de Justice, where he kissed Clara for the first time 15 years ago, from the bar of the Assize Court to which Julien testified on Tuesday.
A few tens of meters and an abyss of pain;
whose words of the father of the family gave the court of assizes of Lyon a dizzying insight.
The only survivor of the arson attack that ravaged the bakery at 125 route de Vienne and the apartment in which his family lived on the first floor, on February 9, 2019, he paid a striking tribute to his wife, 8 months pregnant, and her 4-year-old daughter, also recounting their last moments in the blaze.
“Clara was a person who did not leave anyone indifferent, of great humanity, a whirlwind of life
, praises her grieving husband.
To sum up Clara was life
.
He celebrates
“the smile”
of the young 21-year-old student who made him
“swirl his head”
, relives his
“love at first sight”
and the courtship he indulged in.
“His loss is a huge wound that opened under my feet
,” says the forties in front of a red-eyed court.
blaze
The metaphor hits a terrible reality when the man tells how the ground sank after the explosion on the ground floor, letting smoke into the apartment.
It is 8:29 p.m. and Julien is in the living room armchair while Clara, 8 months pregnant, reads a story to her four-year-old daughter, to put her to sleep, "like every night
"
.
The dad describes
“an explosion, as if my house was bombarded”
, then
“a dantesque smoke”
.
The investigation confirmed an extremely violent disaster, with two fires starting in the bakery below.
The father does not have time to run to his daughter's room when he finds her with the mother in the hall trying to open the front door, in vain.
“Dad, my throat is itchy, I can't breathe
,” implores his daughter.
Julien seized the child under his arm, this little body of which he recounts at the helm with what application and clumsiness he carried it as an infant in his "
happiness of being a dad, of feeling her in [his] arms, of feeling them »
.
“A happiness of each moment with two beings of light
, blows Julien.
Ana was my whole life
.
It is therefore to protect this life so cherished that the father rushes towards the kitchen while
“the flames and the smoke run in cavalcade behind me”,
thinking that his wife is following them.
He approaches the window that overlooks the street.
This window from which he has observed for months the life of the deal point located in front of the apartment, which the family wanted to leave.
The time to ask Ana to open it, the little girl disappears in the smoke.
"I see a man trying to climb, I understand that people are beckoning me to jump
," says Julien.
The next moment, his back cracks when he lands barefoot on the sidewalk, his lungs burned.
“A Huge Void”
On the night of February 9, when the alleged arsonist was seen leaving the neighborhood with burns on his body, the firefighters barely had time to tell the dad the fate of his family before he was transported to the service. burn victims at the Édouard-Herriot hospital for several months of convalescence.
During this time, the investigation progresses and the criminal track is quickly privileged.
In July, the two managers of the bakery are placed in pre-trial detention.
They are accused of having ordered the fire to a third, absent and imprisoned in Tunisia after his conviction at first instance for these facts.
Heard in the afternoon, they continued to refute the charges of attempted insurance fraud.
With all the
And the professional to evoke
"appalling nightmares in which he sees the charred bodies"
as well as a
"survivor's syndrome
" illustrated by the escheat of an
"extinct man".
“It's heartbreaking that they are no longer there
, proclaims the father of the family at the helm.
I have few words to describe this immense emptiness, this incomprehension, this inhumanity, this cruelty
.
He burst into tears, evoked
"the desire to go and join them".
Then says how the mere presence of close friends with their children sends him back to his own emptiness: “
Everything brings me back to death, I am death
”.