The Marseille Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation for “involuntary manslaughter” after the accident of a bus from L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) that caused two deaths on a mountain road in the French Pyrenees. The two deceased people are two women of Colombian origin, a community that has been shaken by the accident.
In a statement, the Prosecutor’s Office points out that there are still “several injured people hospitalized, both in France and Spain”, among them the driver, “of Spanish nationality”, reports EFE. The French Public Ministry is currently investigating only the driver of the vehicle.
The accident left two dead and 32 injured, including the driver and the tour organizer, who were taken to French and Spanish hospitals. Three days later, 14 are still hospitalized, three of them in Barcelona (one serious, in Vall d’Hebron) and eleven in centers in the south of France (eight of them, serious), according to sources from the Government delegation. .
The investigation expressly refers to an alleged “deliberate violation of a particular obligation of prudence or safety by the driver.”
Along with the driver, the investigations, entrusted to the Prades Gendarmerie, close to the scene of the accident, assisted by the Montpellier Gendarmerie, will try to determine if there are others involved in it.
This investigation is added to the one opened by the Generalitat of Catalonia and after sources close to the case indicated that the bus had its technical vehicle inspection (ITV) expired in 2023.
The Prosecutor’s Office indicated that its objective will be to “safely determine the identity of all the victims, the conditions of organization of that trip and the cause of the loss of control of the vehicle that caused the accident.”
The investigation falls to the Marseille Prosecutor’s Office because it has interregional powers in matters of traffic accidents and after the Perpignan Prosecutor’s Office, which is the closest, decided so.
Until now, it had been reported that 47 people were traveling on the bus, 33 of them of Colombian nationality, the same as the two fatal victims of the accident. The vehicle had left L’Hospitalet de Llobregat bound for Andorra to take advantage of the ‘Black Friday’ discounts.
According to the first testimonies, the bus had problems with the gearbox and brakes on a downward slope section of the narrow mountain road, at more than 1,600 meters above sea level, so the driver decided to crash it against the rocky ledge. next to which the road runs.
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