Le Figaro Marseille
It was a year ago. In the middle of the night, on Easter weekend, fear left the peaceful Camas district, in the heart of Marseille, lastingly in mourning. At 12:46 a.m. on April 9, 2023, a four-story building located at 17 rue de Tivoli collapsed. At 7:30 a.m., the adjoining building, number 15, also partially collapsed. Another neighboring building suffered the same fate at the same time. Several buildings in the neighborhood were damaged, requiring the evacuation of hundreds of people. Under the rubble, eight bodies will be discovered, at the end of a week of a macabre count. Eight residents, aged 29 to 88.
“It’s a whole family that is devastated, and still very affected a year later
,” confides to
Figaro
Me Sophie Caïs, lawyer for the family of the youngest victim.
“Plus, it’s a whole life that disappears. There are no more personal effects, nothing we can keep as souvenirs. It’s an entire existence that is erased except in memory.”
A year later, the families of the victims also find themselves facing many unknowns regarding the circumstances of this tragedy. During a press conference given a few days after the tragedy, the public prosecutor of Marseille at the time, Dominique Laurens, indicated that only the apartments on the ground floor and first floor were connected to gas. On April 29, a judicial investigation against X was opened for
“homicide and involuntary injuries”
.
A gas explosion
The first floor of this building was occupied by an old lady who lived alone there. A few days after the tragedy, the son of the inhabitants of the ground floor had filed a complaint
against head”
and
“had problems with gas”
. The public prosecutor of Marseille had herself confirmed that this woman had
“difficulties using gas equipment.”
However, one year later, it is impossible to determine with certainty the responsibilities of each person at this stage of the investigation.
“We know that an explosion took place on the first floor of 17 rue de Tivoli and that the cause of the explosion was indeed gas,”
summarizes Me Pascal Luongo, lawyer for the family of one of the victims who died in this tragedy.
There was too much gas in one confined space.”
“It appears from the file that a stove had been installed by a subcontractor of a famous household appliance brand,”
reports Me Luongo.
Some of its employees were heard. Was the installation faulty? Is there third party liability or not? It may also be the fault of several people. The investigation must allow us to say so.”
“The big challenge ahead is the expertise that will make it possible to determine the origin of the explosion, but to date we have no expert report on this
,” notes Mr. Caïs.
No expert report
And for good reason: in a letter sent to the civil parties this Wednesday, aimed at providing a progress update on the investigations, and which
Le Figaro
obtained, the judge indicates that
“in the present procedure, the fire expert and explosion designated by the public prosecutor on the day of the events asked to be relieved of his mission a few weeks ago
. According to our information, the latter would have been the subject of a judicial summons in a case having no link with the collapse of the rue de Tivoli, and would have asked to withdraw accordingly, considering that a link of trust in Justice had been broken.
“Expertises will soon be carried out, in particular on the technical level and on the medical and psychological levels”
, writes the judge, who recalls however that
“the search for experts can take time.”
The investigation was extended last January to charges of
“destruction, degradation and involuntary deterioration by explosion or fire”
.
“There are 20 civil parties who have already been heard out of the 58 currently constituted between September 13 and February 19
,” indicates the judge in his letter. “
Other civil parties will be heard from the beginning of May 2024”
, with the judge devoting his priority until then
“to drafting the order closing the collapses on rue d’Aubagne.”
In a recent article,
Le Monde
revealed that the Marseille prosecutor's office had requested the referral of four people to the criminal court for this other tragedy that occurred in 2018 which, again, cost the lives of eight people. The trial of the collapses of rue d'Aubagne should open according to our colleagues, on November 7. When contacted, the Marseille prosecutor's office indicated that it would communicate shortly on the Rue de Tivoli affair.