What can this trial be used for?
How to do a "work of justice", as we often say in the courtrooms, when a kid's stupidity breaks entire families?
From this Monday, the Bobigny children's court judges behind closed doors, seven years after the facts, a 19-year-old young man for the appalling fire of a building in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis).
Three occupants were killed.
Two women who had defenestated themselves to escape the flames and a seriously burned man who died three days later.
The survivors are far from unscathed. There are those who were physically injured, those who managed to extricate themselves from the furnace, those that the firefighters saved, the neighbors who witnessed the tragedy ... A dozen people had lodged a complaint at the time. At least six civil parties remain today, mainly relatives of the deceased victims. And then there is the culprit, at least the one who should be at the end of the trial. The 12-year-old boy who “had fun” setting a stroller on fire in the lobby of the building on rue des Postes. Criminalally, Brahim
(the first name has been changed)
hardly risks anything.
When you are under 13 years old and you commit an offense or a crime, you usually get an educational sanction.
Except that he is of age today.
And that he never recovered, either, from the tragedy of which he is at the origin.
Dozens of tenants trapped
On the afternoon of Saturday, June 7, 2014, the 12-year-old boy bought a box of matches in a neighborhood grocery store. His grandmother had given him 20 cents for, she believed, to buy candy. He and his ten-year-old brother spend a lot of time at her house. The two children have been disturbed for two weeks. Their mother left to live in the South with the third child, but without them. Three days before the fire, Brahim had already set fire to a stroller in the hall of the building where one of his friends lives. A resident and other children had turned it off in time. He decides to do it again. His friends and his little brother try to talk him out of it. In vain. Was he angry with someone? Not even. It is 8 p.m. and the fire in the stroller, stored near a gas duct,spreads up the wooden staircase to the roof in just ten minutes. All six floors are engulfed in flames.
To read also "We do not know what is burning": in Aubervilliers, the anguish of the residents of the warehouses
Throughout the building, there is panic.
Screams are heard everywhere.
One man, in particular, reveals himself at this point.
It is Mohssen, a young Tunisian without papers.
This mechanic who has just returned from work descends from the 6th to the 2nd floor, where the flames are impassable.
He bangs on all the doors to warn as many tenants as possible, yells not to come down and ends up going upstairs, accompanied by the majority of residents, or dozens of people.
Again in the sixth, he hears the cries of two young girls stranded in their apartment.
“I kicked the door open, he told us.
I told them we weren't going to die.
The group manages to escape by borrowing the scaffolding on the street side.
"Crushed under the weight of his fault"
On the courtyard side, on the other hand, no way out. On the 5th floor, a couple is a prisoner. Soukaina, 25, throws herself into the void. His companion Mohamed also died, but a few days later. On the sixth floor, Salimata, 23, also defends herself. The young woman, pregnant, had been living with her sisters for only two weeks. Some of the injured, whether physically or psychologically, such as a traumatized child, will later come forward to investigators. The municipality opens a gymnasium to accommodate the survivors. Some people pitch a tent in front of the building. “We lost everything,” summarizes one of the residents. The damage will amount to nearly three million euros. Insurance will partially compensate the victims at the end of a legal battle.
The day after the tragedy, the grandmother finds her grandson in tears in a park. The police identify him without difficulty. The investigation will allow the children accompanying him to be cleared. The boy, like his little brother, will be placed in a home. What did he become ? Contacted, his lawyer Marlène Viallet confides that he is "crushed under the weight of his fault": "His feeling of guilt is such that it prevents him from moving forward. His suffering as a 12-year-old child continues to this day. "
