A victory and relief for the victim's family.
SNCF Réseau was fined 225,000 euros for the involuntary manslaughter of a railway worker who was hit by a train during an intervention in Nancy in 2016, we learned from the lawyer on Thursday of the civil party.
José Garcia, on-call maintenance agent on the evening of December 6, 2016, was working around 11 p.m., in the dark, at 0°C and with thick fog, when he crossed the track and was hit by a train.
He died instantly.
The 49-year-old man was described by his colleagues and superiors as being “very professional” and attentive to safety.
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At the hearing, the question of whether SNCF employees were aware of safety rules was raised, while a report from Direccte, the labor inspectorate, had noted that the agents did not had not done any specific training on this point for several years.
The SNCF “negligent” in matters of safety
The SNCF specifies, in its regulations, that the presence of an announcer (
an agent responsible for monitoring the movement of trains
) is obligatory when the operation takes place in a dangerous zone, on the tracks, and is not. the rest of the time.
During the hearing, SNCF counsel Quentin Dreyfus therefore pleaded for acquittal.
But "at 11 p.m., we must have that in mind", was surprised by the civil party's lawyer Laurent Paté, who in his pleading pointed out "negligence" on the part of the SNCF and "failures" in matters of of security.
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This sentence, pronounced by the Nancy criminal court on Wednesday, is in accordance with the requests made by the public prosecutor during the hearing on November 6, which requested the maximum fine of 225,000 euros.
“This is the culmination of more than six years of procedure,” underlined Laurent Paté.
“I am relieved”, reacted the widow of José Garcia, Sandra Hum, who “waited for the SNCF to be found guilty” of the involuntary manslaughter of her husband and who “hopes” that the SNCF will not appeal this decision after a long procedure where the hearings “were postponed every six months”.
By this decision, her husband, who was “a very good worker”, she emphasizes, was “exonerated”.
At the hearing, José Garcia's widow lamented that the SNCF had not changed its safety procedures since the accident: “How many José Garcias are there going to be?
», she asked.