The man suspected of being at the origin of the fire of a building which claimed the lives of three people on Sunday in Grasse, in the Alpes-Maritimes, was placed in pre-trial detention by the judge of freedoms and detention, the Grasse prosecutor’s office announced on Friday August 18.
Three people, two women and a man, died in this fire that started in the stairwell of a five-storey building located in the historic center of Grasse. They were still being identified on Friday, according to Grasse public prosecutor Damien Savarzeix.
Three people were also seriously injured in the disaster, one of whom was still in “vital emergency” on Friday, he told Agence France-Presse.
A badly put out cigarette
The suspect, aged 47 and with no criminal record, initially denied any involvement in the occurrence of the fire before evoking during his last police custody “a fire started involuntarily by the throwing of a bad cigarette extinct,” the prosecutor added.
“As for the questioning about the presence of traces of accelerant in the building: at this stage, this information is not confirmed”, noted the prosecution on Friday, adding that “the instruction must make it possible to specify the exact circumstances” facts.
The suspect, indicted on Tuesday, in particular for “deliberate damage by fire resulting in death”, had been arrested on Sunday evening. CCTV images had identified “an individual leaving the building two minutes before the cameras detected the start of a fire”, at 2:49 a.m. Sunday morning, according to a press release from the Grasse prosecutor on Monday.