The images are unbearable.
"I'm suffocating", repeats Cédric Chouviat several times to the attention of the police who challenge him.
The new video revealed by the newspaper Liberation on Tuesday may well undermine the defense of the police in the case of the death of the delivery man two years ago.
While the agents involved have always claimed not to have heard the victim's pleas, the images visible in the video filmed by the courier's own mobile phone make it possible to hear his cries quite clearly.
He repeats "I suffocate" no less than nine times.
The 42-year-old father was tackled to the ground on January 3, 2020 with his motorcycle helmet on his head during a police check near the Eiffel Tower, causing him to feel unwell.
Hospitalized in critical condition, he was declared dead on January 5.
🚨 "I'm suffocating": @Libe reveals the video of Cédric Chouviat's last words, which undermine the version of the police.
He repeats this sentence no less than 9 times.
Our investigation ➡️ https://t.co/3ftvA0T5bB pic.twitter.com/gAMP7oBiiG
— Liberation (@libe) January 25, 2022
This video from Cédric Chouviat's phone, already on file, also allows you to see the scene from the courier's point of view.
In this investigative document which lasts a total of ten minutes, we can hear the tone rise over the discussion between the man and the police until mutual insults.
Climbing is done on both sides.
Then we see the man find himself on the ground, police on his back and helmet on his head, repeating several times "I'm suffocating".
However, it is impossible to say whether the police were able to hear him.
“A minute forty-five of strangulation and ventral tackle.
One minute forty-five of savagery.
This savagery is also that of the Ministry of the Interior, whose instructions kill in France, "one of the family's lawyers, Me Arié Alimi, had already commented on Monday.
The publication of these images comes the day after the revelation of a new medical report on the death of delivery man Cédric Chouviat which confirmed the responsibility of the three police officers, leaving the question of their voluntary nature to the investigating judge.
In this document dated January 8, the five medical experts appointed by the judge retain as the cause of death a “simultaneous association of several factors” resulting from the gestures of arrest having “resulted in a very rapid deprivation of oxygen to the brain”.
Neither the gestures of arrest when he was still standing nor his fall "caused any discomfort", according to the experts.
"The problem arises from the moment when the victim, obese with a short neck and a helmet on the head attached under the chin, finds himself in a ventral position with support and support in the dorsal region, a forearm passed forward from the neck that lifts the body to free the arms and bring them behind the back, in a general atmosphere of stress with opposition and struggle”, they sum up in one sentence.
For them, it was on the ground that the death of Cédric Chouviat was played out: the movement back and forth of the "forearm passed under the chin" would have caused a "mechanical crushing of the trachea" and of the carotid.
“Involuntary” or “voluntary” homicide?
Three of the four police officers who took part in the check were indicted in July 2020 for "manslaughter" and were placed under judicial supervision prohibiting them from coming into contact with other members of the intervention team, according to a judicial source. A fourth police officer was placed under the status of assisted witness.
There remains the question raised by the victim's family: was there intentionality in the violence on the part of the police? Cédric Chouviat's relatives accuse them of not having reacted quickly enough to the obvious signs of asphyxiation of the victim, who said nine times "I'm suffocating" in thirteen seconds before feeling unwell. To find out if the police were able to hear the delivery man's cries of agony, which they dispute, a reconstruction of the events, which should insist on the auditory aspect, should be organized soon, according to concordant sources. Could then be played a requalification of the facts in "willful violence resulting in death", a crime punishable by assizes, as requested by the family.
Asked, Me Laurent-Franck Lienard, lawyer for two of the police officers, reacted to the publication of the video by declaring to the Parisian that "it is obviously a violation of the secrecy of the instruction" and " that a judicial investigation does not take place through the press but in the office of a judge”.
