Several teams of gendarmes proceeded this Thursday, September 15 afternoon, around 3:30 p.m., to the arrest of the alleged driver who, Wednesday evening had mowed down two octogenarian women in the Racou district in Argelès-sur-Mer (Pyrénées-Orientales).
“From the first hours after this dramatic accident, we had deployed an important system to identify and then to locate the presumed driver of the vehicle which had hit these two people.
In particular, we had very quickly dispatched a forensic technician on the spot to exploit all the elements likely to provide us with an identification track, ”explains squadron leader Céline Thomas of the Pyrénées-Orientales gendarmerie group.
Two vacationers taking a walk
The driver was driving at very high speed in the wake of the Bois de Valmarie campsite, behind Racou beach, when he hit head-on and mowed down two vacationers who were taking a mid-evening walk.
One of them, aged 87, taken care of by firefighters from Sdis 66 did not survive her injuries.
She died at the scene a little later that night.
The second victim, aged 85, was transported to the Perpignan hospital center in a state of absolute emergency.
This Thursday evening, polytraumatized, it was still in critical condition.
The driver of the vehicle fled after the shock of great violence which occurred Wednesday evening around 9:30 p.m.
Following his arrest, this alleged driver was immediately placed in police custody within the jurisdiction of the Céret gendarmerie company.
