A 23-year-old motorist was remanded in custody on Sunday July 30, the Versailles prosecutor’s office said. The man was intoxicated at the time of the accident between his car and a bus which killed two people on Friday in Mézières-sur-Seine in the Yvelines.
The prosecution opened a judicial investigation for manslaughter and involuntary injuries and the motorist was presented to an investigating judge. His blood alcohol level was measured at 2.04 grams per liter of blood, according to the public prosecutor Maryvonne Caillibotte who gave a press conference on Friday.
The accident occurred in Mézières-sur-Seine, 42 kilometers northwest of Paris, on departmental 113. Two bus passengers, a 64-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman, died , and five were seriously injured. Thirty-three passengers were declared in “relative emergency”.
“No memory” of the accident
The driver of the car was heard on Saturday after being released from hospital where he was operated on for a broken arm. According to his first statements, he had taken the wheel early Friday morning when he had not slept and returned from several evenings during which he had consumed alcohol, according to the prosecution. He said he had “no memory” of the accident, the prosecution added, considering the possibility that he “may have fallen asleep” at the wheel.
According to the first elements of the investigation, entrusted to the Mantes-la-Jolie police station, the car arrived in front of the bus; she crossed the white line and hit the front right of the bus in the wrong direction, before going “to be embedded in a post”, detailed the magistrate. The bus went out of its lane and fell down the road.
The Keolis company vehicle transported around forty people and ensured for the SNCF the replacement of the section of the J line of the Transilien between Épône-Mézières and Mantes-la-Jolie, on an axis closed for works, according to the Transilien site.
The driver faces up to seven years in prison.