The defendant had been arrested in flagrante delicto, on August 2, following two suspicious brush fire starts in Précy-Sous-Thil (Côte d’Or), in the north-east of Morvan.
A depressive and suicidal forties was sentenced, Wednesday in Dijon, to three years in prison, two of which were suspended for eight voluntary fire starts in the Morvan. Lionel Brevet, 42, will be able to serve his one-year sentence in house arrest, with an electronic bracelet, but will have to submit to an obligation to work and take care of himself, decided the Dijon criminal court.
The president of the court, Julien Albouze, explained that he took into account the defendant’s clean criminal record and the absence of “sufficient material elements” to convict him of the 19 arson attacks for which he was prosecuted. Only eight of them were thus retained.
The public prosecutor, Olivier Caracotch, had requested three years in prison, including 18 months suspended, stressing that these fire starts “could have degenerated”. 19 starts of fire also meant “19 interventions of the firefighters, 19 interventions of the gendarmes, 19…”, listed the prosecutor.
“It’s distress”, simply pleaded the defendant to explain his gesture. Before collapsing in tears, he claimed to have fallen into depression following the death of his father last spring. “You said in police custody that you had impulses and a fascination for firefighters, your sister-in-law being one”, questions the president of the court, without obtaining clear answers. “I did it at random. I was drunk”, simply replied the defendant, collapsed on the witness box, visibly overwhelmed.
Partial release of certain fire outbreaks
The psychiatric expertise will confirm “suicidal thoughts”, evoking “arsonist” behavior, but particular, because the defendant left the premises just after starting a fire, “without wanting to see the consequences”, unlike the fascinated arsonists by the flames.
The defendant had been arrested in flagrante delicto, on August 2, following two suspicious brush fire starts in Précy-Sous-Thil (Côte d’Or), in the north-east of Morvan. The gendarmerie had set up a surveillance system for the suspect after the multiplication of fires in a very concentrated sector: meadows, fields, a barn… Without ever causing either a victim or major damage.
We must “get out of the context” of this summer marked by numerous violent fires, pleaded Maxime Paget, lawyer for the defendant, denouncing a trial with “great echo in the media”. The council pleaded, and obtained, the partial release of certain fire starts, ensuring the absence of evidence incriminating his client, who had an alibi for certain fires, like this July 14 when he was… “at the firefighters’ ball “, he quipped.